Podcasts about brahmans

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right? In Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion (Oxford UP, 2024), Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right? In Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion (Oxford UP, 2024), Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion. Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/southeast-asian-studies

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right? In Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion (Oxford UP, 2024), Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right? In Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion (Oxford UP, 2024), Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right? In Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion (Oxford UP, 2024), Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/buddhist-studies

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right? In Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion (Oxford UP, 2024), Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/indian-religions

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right? In Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion (Oxford UP, 2024), Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/religion

Scholars of religion have mostly abandoned the concept of "syncretism" in which certain apparent deviations from "standard" practice are believed to be the result of a mixture of religions. This is particularly relevant to Thailand, in which ordinary religious practice was seen by an earlier generation of scholars as a mixture of three religions: local spirit religion, Hinduism, and Buddhism. In part, the perception that Thai Buddhism is syncretistic is due to a misunderstanding of traditional Buddhism, which has always accepted the existence of local spirits and gods. Nevertheless, there are aspects of Thai Buddhist practice that still stubbornly appear syncretistic. Moreover, Thai Buddhists themselves are increasingly adopting the language of syncretism, referring to traditional Thai religion as a mixture of local, Hindu, and Buddhist practices. This raises the question: If syncretism is so wrong, then why does it seem so right? In Holy Things: The Genealogy of the Sacred in Thai Religion (Oxford UP, 2024), Nathan McGovern answers this question through an in-depth study of the worship of spirits, gods, and Buddha images--all known as sing saksit, or "holy things"--in Thailand. He takes the reader on a historical and genealogical journey, showing how the category saksit began as a term to describe a power that is inherent to gods and spirits and accessible to Brahmans. Only later, when it was used in the nineteenth century to translate the Western concept of the "holy" did it become associated with Buddhist practice. McGovern shows that what appears to be syncretism is actually an illusion. The worship of "holy things" is not a mixture of different religions, but the category of "holy things" is a mixture of different ways of talking about religion.

Ever wondered what it takes to breed top-quality Brahmans? This week on the podcast we have Alf Collins, of ALC Brahmans, sharing how he and the team do just that with a disciplined approach to breeding and selection. Alf discusses the evolution of the ALC herd, the business today and the stringent criteria they apply when selecting their Brahmans. ALC started with Alf's grandfather when he introduced Brahman genetics into his British herds back in the 1950s. This move was met with scepticism by many, who considered Brahman cattle more suitable for a zoo than a farm. However, the benefits quickly became apparent, leading to a legacy that Alf and his family continue to build upon. Today, ALC operates over 70,000 acres in Queensland, with roughly 1,700 seed stock females and 1,200 commercial females.Mark and Alf discuss the selection criteria employed at ALC and their use of EBVs to breed a Brahman that excels in reproduction, survivability and temperament, is well-muscled, and is highly efficient at grazing. Alf explains how they have optimised fertility by not moving their mating date based on weather conditions. Instead, they stick to the 1st of October, regardless of conditions. “We don't change our production year because of the rain, because the reliability is not there. The wet season can start in October. It may start in March. And we don't know. So we've taken an approach that we'll select cattle that work regardless and only keep those that work,” explains Alf. “What we're selecting for is what we call a dry season mating most years. So, a cow in the herd that says, ‘I'll put my hand up and work whether you rain on me or not. And if you do rain on me, I'll go even harder'.”It is not just fertility that ALC focuses on. The Collinses have been breeding for natural resistance to ticks and parasites for many years. He explains that they didn't like the idea of using such severe chemicals, for the sake of both the cows and the humans. It also made good business sense to breed for resistance. “It came back to trying to run a profitable cattle business and the fact that we didn't want to spend money on tickicides,” says Alf. “We just had to be disciplined in the fact that we weren't going to do it. They have to get worms and they have to get ticks. We have to let that happen and remove the ones that can't handle it. And we continue to do it today, and we'll go back and analyse that by sires. If there's linkage here, we'll get rid of the sires too.”Mark and Alf also discuss temperament, muscling and efficiency, along with much, much more. Alf has a clear passion for breeding Brahmans and his enthusiasm is infectious. The success of ALC shows that with a clear goal and strategy, a commitment to science and sustainable practices, and a rigorous approach to culling, huge progress can be made towards improving livestock to meet the criteria of the environment and production system. Head Shepherd is brought to you by neXtgen Agri International Limited, we help livestock farmers get the most out of the genetics they farm with. Get in touch with us if you would like to hear more about how we can help you do what you do best - info@nextgenagri.com.Thanks to our sponsors at MSD Animal Health and Allflex, and Heiniger Australia and New Zealand.These companies are leaders in their respective fields and it is a privilege to have them supporting the Head Shepherd Podcast. Please consider them when making product choices, as they are instrumental in enabling us to bring you this podcast each week.Check out Heiniger's product range HERECheck out the MSD range HERECheck out Allflex products HERE

Welcome to Episode 34 of A Place To Call Home Podcast.G'day and welcome to another episode of A Place to Call Home podcast, on today's episode we chat to Brad Inglis from Sturt Plain. Succession has been a big topic this season and today we chat about what its like coming into a family business and working through the process.Throughout this Episode we also chat about.- Coming into a family business- Heading North- Importance of Brahmans in Northern Australia- Animal husbandry and how it can benefit your business.You can find out more about Brad and Sturt Plains Brahmans below.Sturt Plains Brahmans | FacebookIf you enjoyed the episode, please share with your friends and family.For more information check out our socialsA Place To Call Home | Hughenden QLD | FacebookA Place To Call Home

Welcome to Episode 32 of A Place To Call Home Podcast.G'day and welcome to another episode of A Place to Call Home podcast, on today's episode we chat to Hamish Brett from Brett Cattle Company. This was a great conversation, and we covered a wide range of topics.Throughout this Episode we chat about.- Working in a family business- Going away to become  a Vet- Starting his own vet clinic- Working through the Live export ban- Starting the succession conversation- How succession can affect a family dynamic- Working through family tragedy- Life after a succession process- The role Brahmans play in the Northern Beef IndustryYou can find out more about Hamish and Brett Cattle Company belowBrett Cattle Company (@brettcattlecompany) • Instagram photos and videosBrett Cattle Company | Baines NT | FacebookIf you enjoyed the episode, please share with your friends and family.For more information check out our socialsA Place To Call Home | Hughenden QLD | FacebookA Place To Call Home

Welcome to Episode 31 of A Place To Call Home Podcast.G'day and welcome to another episode of A Place to Call Home podcast, on today's episode we chat to Ashley Kirk from Rockley Brahmans. We cover a range of topics on this podcast, and I am very grateful for Ashley being so open and generous while sharing his experiences.Throughout this Episode we chat about.- Going through Johnes disease- Starting the succession conversation- Finding the right succession mediator- How succession can affect a family dynamic- Life after a succession processYou can find out more about Ashley and Rockley Brahmans below.About Rockley Brahmans - Red Brahman Bulls for sale since the 1950sRockley Brahmans (@rockleybrahmans) • Instagram photos and videosRockley Brahmans | Moura QLD | FacebookIf you enjoyed the episode, please share with your friends and family.For more information check out our socialsA Place To Call Home | Hughenden QLD | FacebookA Place To Call Home

This episode may get your heads scratching if you're tuning in from a society that has very specific relationship dynamics and arrangements in place. My curiosity to how other's live their lives and what they deem as healthy for their relationships has never been higher, as I am in the process of becoming the best partner and friend myself.In this episode, I speak to Akil Apollo Davis, a full-time Performing Artist & Theatre Professor of Mask and Art Aesthetic. He has been a unique and influential presence in New York City's performance, educational and cultural avant-garde for 2 decades. We discuss the ins and outs of this thing called Sex Positivity. And to give you a brief idea, sex positivity is a social and cultural movement that promotes an affirmative and open attitude towards all aspects of sexuality. It encourages individuals to embrace and explore their own sexual desires, preferences, and identities without judgment or shame. Sex positivity emphasizes the importance of consent, communication, and respect in sexual relationships. He has trained with Monks in Thailand, Brahmans in Bali, Witches in New York, and has worked with Psychologists to bridge the gaps between esoteric knowledge and classical paradigms. Akil's Karmic mantra: there must be more light. Episode Highlights Meet the one and only Akil How he went from celibacy to monogamy to discovering consensual non-monogamy Akil's understanding of attachment and fear in relationships The establishment of monogamy Accessing your healthy sexual energy The tiers of being non-monogamous, and the importance of communication on your wants and needs Emotional maturity Real life examples on how non-monogamy works The ins and outs of play parties The downsides of sex positivity/monogamy Compersion - a new word to remember Resources, courtesy of Akil:Sex-Positivity for Curious Minds 1.“The Ethical Slut: A Practical Guide to Polyamory, Open Relationships & Other Adventures” by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy2.“Come As You Are: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life” by Emily Nagoski3.“Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships” by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá4.“Opening Up: A Guide to Creating and Sustaining Open Relationships” by Tristan Taormino5.“What Makes a Baby” by Cory Silverberg (for all kinds of families)6.“Queer: A Graphic History” by Meg-John Barker and Julia Scheele7.“The New Topping Book” by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy8.“The New Bottoming Book” by Dossie Easton and Janet Hardy9.“Girl Sex 101” by Allison Moon and KD Diamond10.“Pussy: A Reclamation” by Regena Thomashauer11.“Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century” by Barbara Carrellas12.“Sex God Method” by Daniel Rose13.“The Art of Sexual Magic: Cultivating Sexual Energy to Transform Your Life” by Margo Anand Psychological and Emotional Work for Curious Minds1.“The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” by Bessel van der Kolk2.“The Sexual Healing Journey: A Guide for Survivors of Sexual Abuse” by Wendy Maltz3.“Healing Sex: A Mind-Body Approach to Healing Sexual Trauma” by Staci Haines4.“Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha” by Tara Brach5.“The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship” by Don Miguel Ruiz6.“Hold Me Tight: Seven Conversations for a Lifetime of Love” by Dr. Sue Johnson7.“More Than Two: A Practical Guide to Ethical Polyamory” by Franklin Veaux and Eve Rickert8.“Love's Executioner and Other Tales of Psychotherapy” by Irvin D. Yalom9.“Sexual Intelligence: What We Really Want from Sex—and How to Get It” by Marty Klein Improving Your Sex Life1.“She Comes First: The Thinking Man's Guide to Pleasuring a Woman” by Ian Kerner2.“The Multi-Orgasmic Man: Sexual Secrets Every Man Should Know” by Mantak Chia and Douglas Abrams3.“The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play and the Erotic Edge” by Tristan Taormino4.“The Multi-Orgasmic Woman: How Any Woman Can Experience Ultimate Pleasure and Dramatically Enhance Her Health and Happiness” by Mantak Chia and Rachel Carlton Abrams5.“The Multi-Orgasmic Couple: How Couples Can Dramatically Enhance Their Pleasure, Intimacy, and Health” by Mantak Chia, Maneewan Chia, Douglas Abrams, and Rachel Carlton Abrams6.“The Enlightened Sex Manual: Sexual Skills for the Superior Lover” by David Deida7.“Guide to Getting It On: Unzipped” by Paul Joannides, Psy.D.8.“Passionista: The Empowered Woman's Guide to Pleasuring a Man” by Ian Kerner  Get in touch with Stephanie: www.listeningwellpodcast.com | @listeningwellpodcast Thank you for Listening Well!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

 Johanna Quass, the oldest competitive Gymnast proves at 97 years young, how she can beat mostly all people in gymnasts. She eats a plant-based diet.I have seen many YouTube videos about old-fit people…My conclusion: If we eat meat/fish/poultry/dairy or any other acid food for the body, when we are getting older our joints will suffer tremendously…When I was traveling through India/Nepal/Tibet I compared the flexibility of the spine and health of the old Brahmans above 85 years old with Tibetans… The difference is so huge. Because the Brahmans are healthy and even above 90 years old, they have no problem bending down their spine and the Tibetans are getting a stiff, pain-driven spine when over 60 years old… The reason is simple, the Tibetans are eating meat… and the Brahmans are eating a plant-based diet.  If we grow older we are getting lazy to do body exercise…The Hindu philosophy proves, our passions or sex drive is going down above 60 years old and so we move from Rajas to Tamas, or become lazy…To advert aging, we have to do a lot of body exercises every day.  -Guess that is saying all old people above 80 years…We should make body exercise at least every day for hours… Johanna Quass said: Remain active… So she trains every day for hours to remain her fitness… Without pain, no gain… And that was telling old people in bodybuilding studios.I am eating a raw-food diet for 35 years, (65 years old), and doing all kinds of sports and my joints are perfect, so my health is!For instance: I wanted to heal my broken spine/vertebral disks entirely.I thought, if an old Indian woman (above 90 years old) can pick up for hours leaves by bending her spine totally down, then I should be able to do the same…My Goal was: to lift up my arms over my head with a straight spine, and then push down my spine totally so that my arms could swing through my legs… 100 times within 2 minutes. We call that the woodcutter exercise.Within 3 months I could do so… Then I got a spine scan (MRI)… My spine/vertebral disks are perfectly healed even so my osteoporosis.  For my osteoporosis, I eat tempeh and natto. My heart beats and blood pressure went down with my decreasing sex drive…In the morning I had only 54 to 56 heart beats/minute, a too low blood pressure of 120 (best is 140 after the new research results, with 120 blood pressure you live 7 years less than with 140), and heart arrhythmia (in between the regular beats I had within 1-minute 2-3unregulated beats). This condition of the cardiovascular system promotes heart arrest!Then I trekked in the mountains of Nepal and I got totally exhausted and lost 7 kg…After coming home, and doing High Interval training on the treadmill… My heartbeat is above 62 and my blood pressure is 135 and no heart arrhythmia anymore… I reduced also my ginger consumption… I explain this later ..Body exercises can do miracles! My Video:  Plant-based diet + exercise = longevity https://youtu.be/Z9ofvwbAXE0My Audio: https://divinesuccess.net/wp-content/uploads/2021/Podcast3/Plant-based-diet-exercise-longevity.mp3

Nelumbo nucifera, or the sacred lotus, is a plant that grows in flood plains, rivers, and deltas. Their seeds can remain dormant for years and when floods come along, blossom into a colony of plants and flowers. Some of the oldest seeds can be found in China, where they're known to represent longevity. No surprise, given their level of nitrition and connection to the waters that irrigated crops by then. They also grow in far away lands, all the way to India and out to Australia. The flower is sacred in Hinduism and Buddhism, and further back in ancient Egypt. Padmasana is a Sanskrit term meaning lotus, or Padma, and Asana, or posture. The Pashupati seal from the Indus Valley civilization shows a diety in what's widely considered the first documented yoga pose, from around 2,500 BCE. 2,700 years later (give or take a century), the Hindu author and mystic Patanjali wrote a work referred to as the Yoga Sutras. Here he outlined the original asanas, or sitting yoga poses. The Rig Veda, from around 1,500 BCE, is the oldest currently known Vedic text. It is also the first to use the word “yoga”. It describes songs, rituals, and mantras the Brahmans of the day used - as well as the Padma. Further Vedic texts explore how the lotus grew out of Lord Vishnu with Brahma in the center. He created the Universe out of lotus petals. Lakshmi went on to grow out of a lotus from Vishnu as well. It was only natural that humans would attempt to align their own meditation practices with the beautiful meditatios of the lotus. By the 300s, art and coins showed people in the lotus position. It was described in texts that survive from the 8th century. Over the centuries contradictions in texts were clarified in a period known as Classical Yoga, then Tantra and and Hatha Yoga were developed and codified in the Post-Classical Yoga age, and as empires grew and India became a part of the British empire, Yoga began to travel to the west in the late 1800s. By 1893, Swami Vivekananda gave lectures at the Parliament of Religions in Chicago.  More practicioners meant more systems of yoga. Yogendra brought asanas to the United States in 1919, as more Indians migrated to the United States. Babaji's kriya yoga arrived in Boston in 1920. Then, as we've discussed in previous episodes, the United States tightened immigration in the 1920s and people had to go to India to get more training. Theos Bernard's Hatha Yoga: The Report of a Personal Experience brought some of that knowledge home when he came back in 1947. Indra Devi opened a yoga studio in Hollywood and wrote books for housewives. She brought a whole system, or branch home. Walt and Magana Baptiste opened a studio in San Francisco. Swamis began to come to the US and more schools were opened. Richard Hittleman began to teach yoga in New York and began to teach on television in 1961. He was one of the first to seperate the religious aspect from the health benefits. By 1965, the immigration quotas were removed and a wave of teachers came to the US to teach yoga. The Beatles went to India in 1966 and 1968, and for many Transcendental Meditation took root, which has now grown to over a thousand training centers and over 40,000 teachers. Swamis opened meditation centers, institutes, started magazines, and even magazines. Yoga became so big that Rupert Holmes even poked fun of it in his song “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” in 1979. Yoga had become part of the counter-culture, and the generation that followed represented a backlash of sorts. A common theme of the rise of personal computers is that the early pioneers were a part of that counter-culture. Mitch Kapor graduated high school in 1967, just in time to be one of the best examples of that. Kapor built his own calculator in as a kid before going to camp to get his first exposure to programming on a Bendix. His high school got one of the 1620 IBM minicomputers and he got the bug. He went off to Yale at 16 and learned to program in APL and then found Computer Lib by Ted Nelson and learned BASIC. Then he discovered the Apple II.  Kapor did some programming for $5 per hour as a consultant, started the first east coast Apple User Group, and did some work around town. There are generations of people who did and do this kind of consulting, although now the rates are far higher. He met a grad student through the user group named Eric Rosenfeld who was working on his dissertation and needed some help programming, so Kapor wrote a little tool that took the idea of statistical analysis from the Time Shared Reactive Online Library, or TROLL, and ported it to the microcomputer, which he called Tiny Troll.  Then he enrolled in the MBA program at MIT. He got a chance to see VisiCalc and meet Bob Frankston and Dan Bricklin, who introduced him to the team at Personal Software. Personal Software was founded by Dan Fylstra and Peter Jennings when they published Microchips for the KIM-1 computer. That led to ports for the 1977 Trinity of the Commodore PET, Apple II, and TRS-80 and by then they had taken Bricklin and Franston's VisiCalc to market. VisiCalc was the killer app for those early PCs and helped make the Apple II successful. Personal Software brought Kapor on, as well as Bill Coleman of BEA Systems and Electronic Arts cofounder Rich Mellon. Today, software developers get around 70 percent royalties to publish software on app stores but at the time, fees were closer to 8 percent, a model pulled from book royalties. Much of the rest went to production of the box and disks, the sales and marketing, and support. Kapor was to write a product that could work with VisiCalc. By then Rosenfeld was off to the world of corporate finance so Kapor moved to Silicon Valley, learned how to run a startup, moved back east in 1979, and released VisiPlot and VisiTrend in 1981. He made over half a million dollars in the first six months in royalties.  By then, he bought out Rosenfeld's shares in what he was doing, hired Jonathan Sachs, who had been at MIT earlier, where he wrote the STOIC programming language, and then went to work at Data General. Sachs worked on spreadsheet ideas at Data General with a manager there, John Henderson, but after they left Data General, and the partnership fell apart, he worked with Kapor instead. They knew that for software to be fast, it needed to be written in a lower level language, so they picked the Intel 8088 assembly language given that C wasn't fast enough yet. The IBM PC came in 1981 and everything changed. Mitch Kapor and Jonathan Sachs started Lotus in 1982. Sachs got to work on what would become Lotus 1-2-3. Kapor turned out to be a great marketer and product manager. He listened to what customers said in focus groups. He pushed to make things simpler and use less jargon. They released a new spreadsheet tool in 1983 and it worked flawlessly on the IBM PC and while Microsoft had Multiplan and VisCalc was the incumbent spreadsheet program, Lotus quickly took market share from then and SuperCalc. Conceptually it looked similar to VisiCalc. They used the letter A for the first column, B for the second, etc. That has now become a standard in spreadsheets. They used the number 1 for the first row, the number 2 for the second. That too is now a standard. They added a split screen, also now a standard. They added macros, with branching if-then logic. They added different video modes, which could give color and bitmapping. They added an underlined letter so users could pull up a menu and quickly select the item they wanted once they had those orders memorized, now a standard in most menuing systems. They added the ability to add bar charts, pie charts, and line charts. One could even spread their sheet across multiple monitors like in a magazine. They refined how fields are calculated and took advantage of the larger amounts of memory to make Lotus far faster than anything else on the market. They went to Comdex towards the end of the year and introduced Lotus 1-2-3 to the world. The software could be used as a spreadsheet, but the 2 and 3 referred to graphics and database management. They did $900,000 in orders there before they went home. They couldn't even keep up with the duplication of disks. Comdex was still invitation only. It became so popular that it was used to test for IBM compatibility by clone makers and where VisiCalc became the app that helped propel the Apple II to success, Lotus 1-2-3 became the app that helped propel the IBM PC to success. Lotus was rewarded with $53 million in sales for 1983 and $156 million in 1984. Mitch Kapor found himself. They quickly scaled from less than 20 to 750 employees. They brought in Freada Klein who got her PhD to be the Head of Employee Relations and charged her with making them the most progressive employer around. After her success at Lotus, she left to start her own company and later married. Sachs left the company in 1985 and moved on to focus solely on graphics software. He still responds to requests on the phpBB forum at dl-c.com. They ran TV commercials. They released a suite of Mac apps they called Lotus Jazz. More television commercials. Jazz didn't go anywhere and only sold 20,000 copies. Meanwhile, Microsoft released Excel for the Mac, which sold ten times as many. Some blamed the lack os sales on the stringent copy protection. Others blamed the lack of memory to do cool stuff. Others blamed the high price. It was the first major setback for the young company.  After a meteoric rise, Kapor left the company in 1986, at about the height of their success. He  replaced himself with Jim Manzi. Manzi pushed the company into network applications. These would become the center of the market but were just catching on and didn't prove to be a profitable venture just yet. A defensive posture rather than expanding into an adjacent market would have made sense, at least if anyone knew how aggressive Microsoft was about to get it would have.  Manzi was far more concerned about the millions of illegal copies of the software in the market than innovation though. As we turned the page to the 1990s, Lotus had moved to a product built in C and introduced the ability to use graphical components in the software but not wouldn't be ported to the new Windows operating system until 1991 for Windows 3. By then there were plenty of competitors, including Quattro Pro and while Microsoft Excel began on the Mac, it had been a showcase of cool new features a windowing operating system could provide an application since released for Windows in 1987. Especially what they called 3d charts and tabbed spreadsheets. There was no catching up to Microsoft by then and sales steadily declined. By then, Lotus released Lotus Agenda, an information manager that could be used for time management, project management, and as a database. Kapor was a great product manager so it stands to reason he would build a great product to manage products. Agenda never found commercial success though, so was later open sourced under a GPL license. Bill Gross wrote Magellan there before he left to found GoTo.com, which was renamed to Overture and pioneered the idea of paid search advertising, which was acquired by Yahoo!. Magellan cataloged the internal drive and so became a search engine for that. It sold half a million copies and should have been profitable but was cancelled in 1990. They also released a word processor called Manuscript in 1986, which never gained traction and that was cancelled in 1989, just when a suite of office automation apps needed to be more cohesive.  Ray Ozzie had been hired at Software Arts to work on VisiCalc and then helped Lotus get Symphony out the door. Symphony shipped in 1984 and expanded from a spreadsheet to add on text with the DOC word processor, and charts with the GRAPH graphics program, FORM for a table management solution, and COM for communications. Ozzie dutifully shipped what he was hired to work on but had a deal that he could build a company when they were done that would design software that Lotus would then sell. A match made in heaven as Ozzie worked on PLATO and borrowed the ideas of PLATO Notes, a collaboration tool developed at the University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana  to build what he called Lotus Notes.  PLATO was more more than productivity. It was a community that spanned decades and Control Data Corporation had failed to take it to the mass corporate market. Ozzie took the best parts for a company and built it in isolation from the rest of Lotus. They finally released it as Lotus Notes in 1989. It was a huge success and Lotus bought Iris in 1994. Yet they never found commercial success with other socket-based client server programs and IBM acquired Lotus in 1995. That product is now known as Domino, the name of the Notes 4 server, released in 1996. Ozzie went on to build a company called Groove Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft, who appointed him one of their Chief Technology Officers. When Bill Gates left Microsoft, Ozzie took the position of Chief Software Architect he vacated. He and Dave Cutler went on to work on a project called Red Dog, which evolved into what we now know as Microsoft Azure.  Few would have guessed that Ozzie and Kapor's handshake agreement on Notes could have become a real product. Not only could people not understand the concept of collaboration and productivity on a network in the late 1980s but the type of deal hadn't been done. But Kapor by then realized that larger companies had a hard time shipping net-new software properly. Sometimes those projects are best done in isolation. And all the better if the parties involved are financially motivated with shares like Kapor wanted in Personal Software in the 1970s before he wrote Lotus 1-2-3. VisiCalc had sold about a million copies but that would cease production the same year Excel was released. Lotus hung on longer than most who competed with Microsoft on any beachhead they blitzkrieged. Microsoft released Exchange Server in 1996 and Notes had a few good years before Exchange moved in to become the standard in that market. Excel began on the Mac but took the market from Lotus eventually, after Charles Simonyi stepped in to help make the product great.  Along the way, the Lotus ecosystem created other companies, just as they were born in the Visi ecosystem. Symantec became what we now call a “portfolio” company in 1985 when they introduced NoteIt, a natural language processing tool used to annotate docs in Lotus 1-2-3. But Bill Gates mentioned Lotus by name multiple times as a competitor in his Internet Tidal Wave memo in 1995. He mentioned specific features, like how they could do secure internet browsing and that they had a web publisher tool - Microsoft's own FrontPage was released in 1995 as well. He mentioned an internet directory project with Novell and AT&T. Active Directory was released a few years later in 1999, after Jim Allchin had come in to help shepherd LAN Manager. Notes itself survived into the modern era, but by 2004 Blackberry released their Exchange connector before they released the Lotus Domino connector. That's never a good sign. Some of the history of Lotus is covered in Scott Rosenberg's 2008 book, Dreaming in Code. Others are documented here and there in other places. Still others are lost to time. Kapor went on to invest in UUNET, which became a huge early internet service provider. He invested in Real Networks, who launched the first streaming media service on the Internet. He invested in the creators of Second Life. He never seemed vindictive with Microsoft but after AOL acquired Netscape and Microsoft won the first browser war, he became the founding chair of the Mozilla Foundation and so helped bring Firefox to market. By 2006, Firefox took 10 percent of the market and went on to be a dominant force in browsers. Kapor has also sat on boards and acted as an angel investor for startups ever since leaving the company he founded. He also flew to Wyoming in 1990 after he read a post on The WELL from John Perry Barlow. Barlow was one of the great thinkers of the early Internet. They worked with Sun Microsystems and GNU Debugging Cypherpunk John Gilmore to found the Electronic Frontier Foundation, or EFF. The EFF has since been the nonprofit who leads the fight for “digital privacy, free speech, and innovation.” So not everything is about business.    

The Cru wake up far earlier than usual to record with Tee Zee, an author and podcaster from Australia. We chat about how and why certain themes work their way into our writing as well as the joys of flash fiction as a form of storytelling. Stories include dreams that are more than they seem; Satan, transmigrated into a turkey; the chains of daily life (and the freedom that becomes those chains); and a girl searching for her lost friend. You can listen to Tee Zee's podcast, Flash Fiction in Five, here.  His blog, Roads Less Traveled, will include this week's story in print form. From Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: Transmigration of souls. An ancient belief concerning the transition of the soul after death to another body or substance, usually human or animal, also known as metempsychosis. BRAHMANS and Buddhists accept human descent into plants as well as animals, and the BUDDHA underwent 550 births in different forms. The ancient Egyptians held to a form of transmigration in which the soul could inhabit another form to allow temporary revisiting the earth. See also PYTHAGORAS. Stories begin around the 16:15 mark. Write on! Regular episodes of Radio FreeWrite will resume in September 2023.Check out our website for a featured story from this week's episode, and be sure to follow us on Instagram (if that's your sort of thing). Please do send us an email with your story if you write along, which we hope you will do. Episodes of Radio FreeWrite are protected by a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) license. All Stories remain the property of their respective authors.

Subconscious Realms Episode 200 - Tantric Pantheon PT1 - Jin The Ninja. Ladies & Gentlemen, on this Episode of Subconscious Realms we welcome - Jin The Ninja!!, one of our Extraordinary Listeners to discuss The Tantric Pantheon PT1. From the Offset, Jin came with nothing less than a Bombardment of

Guests featured in this episode:Mukulika Banerjee, Professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and Political Science where she was also the inaugural director of its South Asia Centre from 2015 to 2020. Working at the intersection of social anthropology, politics, and history, Mukulika has published widely on South Asia. She edits also the excellent Routledge series, exploring the political in South Asia. Her most relevant publications to this episode are;  Why India Votes [2014]  and  Cultivating Democracy, Politics and Citizenship in Agrarian India.[2021]GlossaryWhat is the caste system in India?(16:15 or p.4 in the transcript)In South Asia, the caste system has been a dominating aspect of social organization for thousands of years. A caste, generally designated by the term jati (“birth”), refers to a strictly regulated social community into which one is born. Some jatis have occupational names, but the connection between caste and occupational specialization is limited. In general, a person is expected to marry someone within the same jati, follow a particular set of rules for proper behavior (in such matters as kinship, occupation, and diet), and interact with other jatis according to the group's position in the social hierarchy. In India virtually all nontribal Hindus and many adherents of other faiths (even Muslims, for whom caste is theoretically anathema) recognize their membership in one of the hereditary social communities. Among Hindus, jatis are usually assigned to one of four large caste clusters, called varnas, each of which has a traditional social function: Brahmans (priests), at the top of the social hierarchy, and, in descending prestige, Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaishyas (originally peasants but later merchants), and Shudras (artisans and laborers). The particular varna in which a jati is ranked depends in part on its relative level of “impurity,” determined by the group's traditional contact with any of a number of “pollutants,” including blood, menstrual flow, saliva, dung, leather, dirt, and hair. Intercaste restrictions were established to prevent the relative purity of a particular jati from being corrupted by the pollution of a lower caste. A fifth group, the Panchamas (from Sanskrit panch, “five”), theoretically were excluded from the system because their occupations and ways of life typically brought them in contact with such impurities. They were formerly called the untouchables (because their touch, believed by the upper castes to transmit pollution, was avoided), but the nationalist leader Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi referred to them as Harijan (“Children of God”), a name that for a time gained popular usage. More recently, members of that class have adopted the term Dalit (“Oppressed”) to describe themselves. Officially, such groups are referred to as Scheduled Castes. Those in Scheduled Castes, collectively accounting for roughly one-sixth of India's total population, are generally landless and perform most of the agricultural labor, as well as a number of ritually polluting caste occupations (e.g., leatherwork, among the Chamars, the largest Scheduled Caste). sourceWhat is a panchayat?(26:03 or p.7 in the transcript)Panchayat is the most important adjudicating and licensing agency in the self-government of an Indian caste. There are two types: permanent and impermanent. Literally, a panchayat (from Sanskrit pañca, “five”) consists of five members, but usually there are more; the panchayat has a policy committee, however, often numbering five. The panchayat sits as a court of law. Cases are heard in open meetings in which all members of the caste group concerned are entitled to take part. Any evidence that has any conceivable bearing on the case is admissible; it can be produced by either party, by onlookers, or by members of the council. Types of offenses adjudicated in meetings of the panchayat are breaches of eating, drinking, or smoking restrictions; infractions of marriage rules; breaches of a caste's customs in feast; breaches of its trade rules; the killing of certain animals, notably cows; and the injury of a Brahman. Less commonly, the panchayat handles criminal and civil cases actionable before a court of law. Panchayats of Muslim castes try only a few of the offenses, as the rest fall under fiqh, or Islāmic law. Penalties take the form of fines (paid by distributing sweets to a caste group or by contributing to a caste fund), the obligation to offer a feast to the berādarī (family brotherhood) or to Brahmans, and temporary or permanent excommunication. Pilgrimage and self-humiliation are sometimes levied, but physical punishment is now uncommon. The passing of the Evidence Act by the British in 1872, with its strict rules of admissible evidence, led to a bypassing of the panchayat by some caste members who began to take their cases directly to the state court (see Indian Evidence Act). Some castes try cases that have come up before a state court or retry them after the verdict of the state court has been given. The Congress Party in India made a point of creating village panchayats as local instruments of government, the so-called panchayat raj, or government by panchayats. source Democracy in Question? is brought to you by:• Central European University: CEU• The Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: AHCD• The Podcast Company: Novel Follow us on social media!• Central European University: @CEU• Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy in Geneva: @AHDCentreSubscribe to the show. If you enjoyed what you listened to, you can support us by leaving a review and sharing our podcast in your networks! 

On this, all-new episode of the Two Shots Podcast we will be joined by guest Carolina Teague host of the League Of Her Own podcast, and Jazz Tamir who covers the team for Project Spurs. The San Antonio Spurs snapped a franchise record 16-game losing streak and picked up their first win of the season after being down by 10 points, making them 1-45 when down by double digits. In February, the Spurs went 6-26 on the road, 6-32 against the west, 1-8 on the rodeo road trip, and 13-46 as underdogs. Jazz Tamir commented on the Spurs' victory and believes that although it was helped by Utah missing some shots, the Spurs defense was lacking in the first half. Keldon Johnson was not pleased with the team's victory over the Jazz and believes there is still work to do. Despite the win, the season has been difficult and demoralizing for the team and its fans. Carolina Teague hopes the team can build upon this win and play more consistent basketball to finish off the season. Spurs leading scorers Keldon Johnson - 25 PTS / 4 REB / 3 AST Doug McDermott – 19 PTS / 3 REB Jeremy Sochan – 13 PTS / 6 REB / 6 AST Devonte Graham – 12 PTS / 1 Reb / 3 AST The highlight of the night for the Spurs - Rookie Blake Wesley had one his best game of the season as he finished the game with 9 PTS on 5 shots, with 6 REB, 2AST, 2 fouls, 3 steals, and 2 turnovers. (H/T Paul Garcia via Twitter) Coach Pop has hinted at Devin Vassell possibly returning to the court on March 2nd when the team plays it's the first game back at the At&t Center since the Rodeo Road Trip. The question? Will Devin Vassell's return make the team more competitive? Jake Paul Vs Tommy Fury fight reaction and thoughts. The San Antonio Brahmas got their first win of the season this past Sunday against the Orlando Guardians 30-12. The Brahmans will next play the Houston Roughnecks this coming Sunday, March 5th at 7:00 PM and the game can be seen on ESPN2. I had the pleasure of seeing a screener for Creed III and I will share my thoughts on the film and you can see the full spoiler-free review at countdowncitygeeks.com Follow Carolina Teague on Twitter @carolinateague_ Follow Jazz Tamir on Twitter @JazzTamir1 --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/twoshotspodcast/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/twoshotspodcast/support

Today our guest is both an accomplished cattleman and aviator. Matt McCamley operates Lancefield M alongside his wife, Janelle. With a rich family history in the Australian Beef Industry, Matt's passion for Brahmans stems from the influences and experiences throughout his life.

This episode continues  our series (which will eventually be a 13 chapter book), moving our story up through time from the Aryans to the Brahmans to the Buddhists to Buddhism's second birth in the form of Mahayana Buddhism. With the Mahayana School, Buddhism comes into full  maturity as a philosophical system. By investigating its core framework of teachings, there is much we can learn.Note: for those who sign up to get the emails of these articles, I often update the article after I first send the link out, so if you want the latest version of the article don't read the one in your Inbox but click on the link and read it from the site if you can.Cheers and God Bless, - Alexalexsachon.com (new "publications" section now up)thewisdomtradition.substack.com (subscribe)link to video version on YouTube via my site

Francis Pedraza CEO and Cofounder of Invisible How was 2021 NYC like 1929 NYC? Is your business prepared for this recession? How did you prepare for the recession? How does profitability change your business? How do you buy back shares from investors? Ownership pizza pie: how do you convince an investor to buy back shares? How does the Golden age apply to partying on the internet? What is the Xeno paradox? You buy back equity with debt, and fInance with profits. This gets around the “bootstrappinig dilemma”.How does thinking in terms of buying back change the game on what you want to get out of your company? It gets investors aligned. What do you think about debt versus equity? Equity is expensive. How did you make it a deal for your investors? Why do people think about equity wrong? How did you set up the Finance 101 course? How does Heidegger think about the unsaid or the implied? How can I turn this into an online course (12:00)? What do you think about cryptocurrency? How can we uncover abuse, both subtle and not? What is a cashless loan? What is a strike price? What is art in business? What is the downside of loans? What does it mean to have a full recourse loan? How much do people believe in you?  How can you make sure that a particular value is aligned? Where do most of your ideas come from? What do you mean by “paternalistic”? What are some maternalistic tricks? How do maternal downsides show up in companies? How does one become financially sophisticated? How do the VC's abuse management teams? How do you verify if your agents come in full alignment? Selective informance versus neutral informance. What is Invisible's social media policy? Do you have any agents in Russia? How have you adapted to remote work? What are the edge cases for non-violence? What is ESG? Do weapons manufacturers get ESG money? The road to serfdom Hayek (30:00) Bastiat Grannys lost their money on the stock market, like what is happening to crypto right now. The rule of accredited investors started with FDR. Insider trading created collusion for investing in private companies. 50 million to 100 billion; Theil made a shitload. What are the unseen problems? What are your thoughts on Urbit? What are the metaphysics behind socialism? Why does utopia always require intervention? Whack-a-mole socialism Will technology ever be a full magic wand? It is similar to the question of eternal life. What is the Persian holy epic book? Bhagavad Gita Mahabharata Reminds me of King Ashoka.. Who are the Shatriya? Brahmans are the priests. How can we be warriors for the truth? Am I changing or just progressing? How do I mix this perfection and becoming? What are your thoughts on purgatory? Why does being want to be?Why are there these realms of time? How did you learn how to manage your calendar? Do you like management? God got bored being one thing so he made many things. How do you determine the integrity level of another individual? Who are the Pre-Socratics? Who is Parmenides?There are no clear-cut lines between things. What is that an artifact of? What is New York-ness?Are you using virtual machines?What is the Numerai? Visionary Ventures 2024 profits Why does the world need another venture firm? Turing test is the paradigm for Silicon Valley. A test for humans to see how well they adapt to technology. Slurping slushees on a spaceship with Wall-E. How did such a platonic ideal get done by matrix? Da Vinci TestWhen will the average person be able to defeat Da Vinci in a creativity contest? How do you measure productivity? The rise and fall of American growth. Some people are productive and some are not. The Wizard and the Wand The relationship between the wizard and the wand instead of the wand destroying us all. Are you going to become a digital warlord? How do you reduce the distance between thought and action? How does someone stuck in UBI mindset understand the potential they have? ConversionWhere does the will come from? What is the face you had before you were born? What are the two risks I'm facing right now?How do you remove the possibility of defeat? How do you grow a company? No employees allowed. What does it mean to be an employee? What does it mean to be consultative? What did Marxists teach us about how to create value for both the labor and the ownership class? How do you manage the potential when it comes to finance?

Thank you for listening, sharing and subscribing to my podcast. Your support to this podcast is greatly appreciated to help further inspiration to all who open themselves to new awareness of how we move through life with greater ease and understanding. These lessons are shared with men in our jails, prisons, youth programs and places of worship throughout the world. Your support goes to build awareness to how we can show others how to travel through life on that Road Less Traveled. Thank you for all your support! Troy Thomas Joseph Fitch This is a story told by Buddha to his students studying to become Brahmans. A widower who loved his five year old son very much was away on business. A group of bandits came and burned down the entire village and took his son away. When the man returned he saw the ruins and he panicked. He took the chard corps of an infant to be his child. He began to pull his hair and beat his chest crying uncontrollably. He organized a cremation ceremony and collected the ashes and placed them into a beautiful velvet pouch. Working, sleeping or eating he always carried the bag of ashes with him. One day his real son escaped from the robbers and found his way home. He arrived at his fathers new cottage at midnight and knocked at the door. You can imagine at that time the young father who was still carrying the bag of ashes and crying. He asked who is there and the child answered, it's me Papa open the door it's your son. In his agitated state of mind the father thought it was some mischievous boy that was making fun of him and he shouted at the child to go away and he continued to cry. The boy knocked again and again but the father refused to let him in. Some time passed and finally the child left and from that time on father and son never saw one another again. And after telling this story the Buddha said, sometime, somewhere you take something to be the truth, if you cling to it so much when the truth comes in person and knocks at your door, you will refuse to open it. It's a powerful story for young students learning to be Brahmans and it's a powerful story for each and everyone of us. Music: Cafe De Anatolia ~ Ghent Nemnon Live at Baalbeck, Lebanon Lessons From A High School Dropout Podcast is dedicated to all of our uniquely gifted minds who at some point felt sadly alone as they struggled with the challenge of learning or discouraged for holding the vision and dreams within their brilliant minds. Lessons From A High School Dropout is here to support the spirit of the entrepreneur, the student, the employee and to help build these dreams upon the gifts each one of us are endowed with. Maybe you were told you couldn't do something and needed to choose another path. We all learn in our own special way, each with a unique desire for a sense of fulfillment in our journey. We affirm that with each lesson you will be more inspired to learn new things to help you with your walk in life. A walk that will take you down the "Road Less Traveled". A walk where you will learn new things and allow your heart to be inspired with a new road map that can and will elevate you to a higher consciousness. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/troy-thomas-joseph-fitch/message

"How are the life stories of Buddha and Jesus similar? There are many similarities between the mythical elements of Jesus and Buddha. Here are just a few of the most striking similarities. Conceived in a miraculous manner Similar names of mother (Maya for Buddha, Mary for Jesus) Was a bit of a child prodigy Underwent a long period of fasting while traveling alone Tempted by, but overcame, the devil Began an itinerant ministry around the age of 30 Had disciples who traveled with him. Performed miracles, such as curing blindness and walking on water Renounced worldly riches and required his disciples to do so also Rebelled against the religious elite (Brahmans for Buddha and Pharisees for Jesus) Dispatched disciples, shortly before his death, to spread his message Were the writers of The Holy Bible aware of Buddhism? Although the distance between the homelands of Jesus and Buddha was great, there was plenty of contact between the two areas and 600 years for ideas to spread. Both trade and the wars of the ever-expanding Roman Empire facilitated contact. There is also the possibility that ideas “met halfway.” It did not require one person to traverse the 3000 miles. The ideas could have been passed along like the Olympic baton. There is a lot of evidence of trade between the two regions. There are various overland routes stretching from China, Asia, Arabia, and Europe, some going back as far as 1500 BCE. These routes were known as The Silk Road (or Silk Route), the Incense Route, and the Spice Route. The transport of goods along these routes relied mainly upon pack animals (camels) and river boats. Goods were also transported by boats across the Indian Ocean. There are cuneiform tablets dating to 2400 BCE describing shipments of cotton cloth, spices, oil, grains, (and even peacocks) which arrest to this trade. Even the Holy Bible attests to this trade with the story of The Three Wise Men from the East traveling by camel with gifts of frankincense and myrrh. You can be sure more than goods were being exchanged. Ideas also traveled these routes. The Buddhist ideas were undoubtedly among the ideas being spread, especially since Buddhist monks had a tradition of missionary zeal. Buddhism does not reject other creeds and religions. Thus, Buddhist ideas could be easily blended with whatever local religious beliefs the monks encountered. Buddhist settled into many areas of the Roman Empire, including Judea. The historian/philosopher Philo, who lived during the time of Jesus, recorded the presence of Buddhists in Egypt. It is quite likely that the authors of The Holy Bible were aware of both Buddha and Buddhist ideas." --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/antonio-myers4/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/antonio-myers4/support

Dhammarato answers a common question: why don't I want to meditate? See the video version of this call on YouTube. ►YouTube Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gE5Nu4e4eA Find the full video chats on the Dhammarato Dhamma YouTube channel. ►YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/DhammaratoDhamma Weekly Sangha calls, everyone is welcome! ►The Sangha US - https://join.skype.com/uyYzUwJ3e3TO ►The Sangha UK - https://join.skype.com/w6nFHnra6vdh To meet Dhamma friends or volunteer to help spread the Dhamma, join our discord. ►Discord - https://discord.gg/epphTGY To unite the growing interest in Buddhism with the hundreds of Buddhist wats in the West, we are in the process of starting the Open Sangha Foundation. If you want to learn more or volunteer to help, join the discord link above and navigate to the "open-sangha" text channel. We are in the process of timestamping and organizing the 1000+ Dhammarato skype calls on this channel. If you would like to help with the process, find more information here - https://bit.ly/3H1EWSA What do the numbers in the title mean? The number by the name of the student indicates the total amount of recorded calls with Dhammarato. The date in the title indicates the date the call was recorded. 00:00:00 Intro 00:00:34 Concentration and experiencing the body 00:07:50 Meditation is not work 00:10:33 Right Effort to develop sukkha 00:22:12 On the word "meditation" 00:27:47 Doing nothing 00:29:57 Brahmans saying "the world is a dream." 00:35:37 The Right Noble View is right now 00:50:23 Life is a play, just enjoy the show!

Series: Be'erot, Love & Relationship with God.   Synopsis:  Avraham's anavah is reflected in chesed, the path of love is knowing the unity.   Episode Transcript:   We began to explore last time an aspect of Avraham that is revealed when he speaks to G-d the first time. When he speaks to G-d at the moment when he is told that Sodom and Amora are going to be destroyed and he says, Anochi afar v'efer. From there, the Rabbis teach us that Avraham Avinu's great midah, his root trait, is anavah. Of course, in the revealed aspect of Avraham, he lives a life as the midah of chesed, and he becomes the expression par excellence of love of G-d. What we are looking at is his origin of love of G-d in this expression of his, which is his words to Hakadosh Baruch Hu which reveal a pnimi aspect of him, which is anochi afar v'efer, which is he is an anav. What I want to continue to explore is how that midah becomes reflected in the chesed of Avraham, and particularly in the way his path to love is one of knowing the unity as opposed to what we came to know of the path to love of David, which is a path to love by the joy of life. Because, for David, it was the effervescent and bubbling flow of the spring of life in its creativity and access to newness and to the excited realities that happen when that flow flows into the world. So his love of G-d came from that, as we saw in his love of G-d through his dancing. And he said about himself that he was a person of shiflut when he speaks to Michal. That aspect of love, which is David, I think is different than the aspect of love which is Avraham's. And that's what I want to talk about. In a sense, they are two paths that are different from each other. Because Avraham is the very beginning and David is the very end. Both of them are lovers of G-d at a different origin. We have seen so much along the way of how Yitzchak is the one who comes to love G-d by virtue of realizing the specific in the context of G-d's withdrawal and making space for. And Yaakov is the one who comes to love of G-d in the connection of him through the organismic unity of things in which all of the particulars and specifics are present, but there is a flow of life through them, as he loves his own life, loves that life which is the life of the world. The aspect of love which becomes reflected when G-d says, V'ahavta et Hashem Elokecha, when Moshe speaks and says, You shall love G-d, ki hu chayecha, for He is your life. That was the revelation of Yaakov. Then we followed through with Yisrael in the revelation of personhood and specific connection as the child of G-d and as the one who G-d has invested in, coming to his specific and particular revelation, and all of that then came to be revealed through David, in his ability to accept and live and create from whatever circumstance G-d sends his way. It's all a creative opportunity for expressing more life, more goodness, more presence of G-d, doesn't matter if it's negative or positive, whether it's suffering or it's a celebration. And to a very great extent, especially seeing in this day, which is the yartzeit of the death of Moshe Rabbeinu, so we are called to move to that midah which is becase of that declaration that Haman [imak sh'mo] made, which was since the goral fell out on Adar, for sure it's a good sign for him, because that's the month that Moshe died, but what he didn't know is that Jews raise a l'haim on a yartzeit, whatever G-d sends our way, besides getting into the soul's enlightenment on the day of the death, but just we take what G-d sends us in joyousness and that is the aspect of David, which comes at the end and which allows a new beginning that comes out of that end, the end, the malchut, is the beginning, the keter of the next world. And that's the way it is in all of life's experience. Whenever it seems like the end, and it's over, and it's suffering, and it's finished, actually become the birthing point for what is next, and what is the new realization and creative opportunity that G-d is sending us and that has to do with being attached to the maayan mitgaber, but when one passes through that gate and arrives at the place of simple and tamim, innocent acceptance and it's one thing to be actively involved in the creative movement, and it's another to be in simple acceptance. Because simple acceptance, as opposed to the act of creativity, moves one back into the reality of anavah, as we are going to see, and then the whole process begins again, because anavah is the word which is a characteristics that is representative of keter, the ability to be v'matel to be in abnegation before. And in that abnegation, to be in contact with all. It's very crucial to recognize that we're used to anavah having to do with how a person behaves, and saying that everything I have comes from G-d. But the truth of anavah is that it has to do with the ability to strip away all of the accoutrements and the small definitions of what my reality is and to simply be real and present to what my reality is. And that's why anavah, a word which has another expression of it, and that is of the ani, of being impoverished. And the reason for that is, the aniyut, being impoverished, in this world, in the physical world, is a negative reality, got no money, clothes, food, down in the dumps, is shockingly the highest madrega because the highest madrega is to be stripped into complete pshitut of reality in its greatest simplicity. Before all forms are. That level of unity is a level that Avraham Avinu accessed, and therefore was able to say about himself anochi afar v'efer, and that must be the starting point. A person who doesn't have the acceptance of that must always be caught up in the egoic forms and specifics and constantly be battling for his survival when those forms and specifics become threatened or challenged. So if someone doesn't honor you the way like to be honored, or if someone doesn't call you by your right name or title, so you get all bristly, because you're trying to protect these forms which, if you dig deep down enough, you consider to be your life. If they don't call me Rabbi, then they won't repect me. And if they don't respect me, then they won't listen to me, then (pretending to cry) I won't be able to be creative anymore. Then, if I were real about it, I would totally lose my composure and pretend, but if they wouldn't listen to me, then I wouldn't be creative, and if I wouldn't be creative anymore, then what would I be living for? I'd be dead! Those are voices of the egoic mind which have taken grasp in a way in which the only way we hold onto our sense of reality and presence is by holding onto these forms. That is the speaking of the nefesh behamit, which tells you—the animal soul, which tells you—you're a dead man if you lose all of those appellations, definitions, and names that you've been given. And as long as you are attached to that as that from which you live, then you can never be an anavah, one who truly embraces all of reality along with you on one equal level, whether it be a highly acclaimed Nobel Prize Laureate, or the lowest guy in the street who is a drunkard lying on the road. And only an anav is able to walk up to both of them with the same demeanor of, Here is existence, here is life that I am a part of, that I'm connected to. It's not something that I need to measure myself against, or establish myself as oppose to, or be concerned lest I become too much associated with, that I might lose the standing I have gained or achieved. That must be the starting point for any kind of a life now going to be able to live in unity with reality as it is and to get down to the point when David arrives. Without this as the starting point, so it's all a secondary kind of a battle, I accept it, I judge it, I take it or leave it, depending on whether it serves my false sense of what gives me life and reality.                 I was talking to someone who is in a conflict with his in-laws. So he's telling me that the conflict is supposedly religious issues. The in-laws are not religious, he is religious, they don't like the fact that he is religious, and they keep trying to compromise on his principles about whether they can drive the grandchildren around on Shabbat, take them to the beach, can they eat by them, so it's constantly an ongoing thing. And he feels himself being chipped away, compromise after compromise, what should he do? So I'm listening to him, he wants a piece of advice. What should he do? How much should he compromise, how much shouuld he hold onto? What should he do? So I'm listening to him telling me, They get angry and cold to me, and I know that they're angry at me, and I can't stand that they're angry at me, and I can't live with this, the way they're acting towards me. They have to stop doing that. They have to drop being so negative towards me, and I can't stand it. As I'm listening to him, of course, what's of greatest interest to me is not, of course, the great piece of advice that I'm going to or not give him, but his experience of his reality. About his in-laws being angry at him, and being cold towards him. He can't stand that. He can't live with that. I want to tell you, that as soon as you hear someone say something like that, so that's the place to visit with them. That's the place to visit. Were I to give him any advice, compromise on this, be strong on that, stand up on that, it won't make any difference because those people are in his life in order to bring up his nefesh behemit which is telling him, I can't live when people are angry with me, I can't live when people aren't happy with me or when people don't approve of me. As long as that is sitting there, whetever he will give in on, provide them with, ora attempt to appease them about, is sure to fail because they're being in his life for now to bring him into a clarity of, what is his life? What is his truth? Only when he is liberated from his belief of "I can only live when they approve of me" will he be able to offer them something from a place of truth within himself that they will indeed be able to live. And they will, and I'm one hundred per cent sure that when he gets to that clarity, then that kind of nagging, nawing behavior will end on that part. Because it's his clarity that is required on his part, and it is a matter of anavah. It's a matter of his accessing the truth of his being as, first of all, that which they and no one can take away from him. And his most primal and primary commitment to existence in life is, that when he touches that, so that all of the approval or disapproval, all of the anger or not anger will not be experienced in a way that if you keep moving down the ladder of, and if this happens, then, and if this happens, then, and if this happens, then, etc. I'm a dead man. The only way to undo that is either to look at the falsehood of it, and that's crucial, to look at the falsehoods of all those things, no, of course, not. As soon as he steps out of his egoic mind. But that won't be enough until he also—it's not so much surrender as it is join reality, as it is in its primary level of simple being. First of all I am a soul, divine, at one with life, at one with all of life, with all that is, everything else is secondary. That's the place of anavah and all creative activity begins from there, and if it doesn't, then it becomes driven, false, egotistical. That's why it's so important to me to begin to this midah and return to this midah. And it is this midah that Avraham Avinu holds as we saw from the Zohar, which is also called ever mah, the limb of what, the ability to stand in whatness. Coach mah, chochmah, the power of the what, which is pointed to the keter, which is pointed towards the crown, which stands at the juncture between nothingness and something. And is always cognizant of the transition into something from nothing in its most mysterious and wondrous aspect so it never becomes attached because it's always at the place between nothing and something. So this being of Avraham, very beautifully is manifested in the holdiay which is the holiday of Avraham. What I mean is each of the holidays has an aspect that it is a teaching of. And a forefather that it is a manifestation of. Sukkot is easy. Yaakov is the only one who lived in a place called Sukkot. Yitzchak, who is the man of gevurah and of the relationship of differentiation is knegged Shavuot, when we take our oath, at the end of the weeks, to be forever betrothed to G-d, forever married to Him, standing outside of Him, as the one who is commanded by the commander. That is Shavuot, Yitzchak, and in fact, the shofar that is heard there is the shoar of the ram of akeidha. Pesach is Avraham, and in fact, he is the only who mentions what is the primary manifestation of Pesach, which is matzah. When the angels come, he tells Sarah, go knead and make matzot. The Rabbis say, do you know why that was? Because when the angels came, when he was going to speak Anochi afar v'efer, it was Pesach. Because Avraham is that holiday, and for a simple reason. It is the pure beginning. Just as it is the pure beginning of us as a people, it is the pure beginning of us as a people through Avraham. It's what he is, and in fact, even specifically in Pesach, the specific feature of Pesach, which is his, is the matzah. Maror is the bitteness and gevurah and judgements of the living of the separateness which is Yitzchak. The lamb, the seh tamim which has to be brought, the simple lamb is Yaakov, who is a she psurah, it says about him Yisrael, always that's one of the representations, as opposed to Esav, who is coming to wolf him down, and the matzah is Avraham. And it's so perfect and beautiful, because matzah is called lechem oni, the impoverished bread, which despite all of the different interpreations I'm sure you've heard, its most simple reading is that it's the most simple, undressed and most primal bread, lechem oni. Any additive you add to matzah, whether it be oil, eggs, sugar, which is not the most basic being of bread, flour and water. Flour and water is all it takes to hold it together. Anything you add to that, it's no longer matzah. And in fact, in rabbinic Hebrew, matzah is simply another word for any unadulterated purity as used in various contexts having to do with hide that is used for right sifrei Torah, that it be "matzah." That is, that it has to be unadulterated, and there's gematriot around that. But the point is an unadulterated reality, and that is, indeed, the root of liberation. Liberation doesn't come when you add on the riches and wealth that you accumulate. You may be, so to speak, freer to do what you want to do in this world. To buy the things you want to buy, to go to the places you want to go to, to see the things you want to see. So it does acquire for you in this world of forms, the ability to acquire things. But obviously, and you all know, that the real liberty, the real freedom, cheirut, belongs to those who are identified with one thing and one thing only and that is life, being and the goodness of it in its utter simplicity. The amazing thing is that Pharoah, in seeking to destroy us, when he saw how much we were reproducing, attempted to destroy us by taking away from us the accoutrements of life, so to speak, by which I mean, he tried in taking away the men and killing the men, was seeking to kill off identity as it becomes revealed through names. At the beginning of the book of names is very painstakingly careful, after it lists the sons of Yaakov, to not list anyone's name. People are all anonymous. Even people who are mentioned, like Shifra and Puah, those aren't their names. They have other names. Those are actually words of what they would try to do. They would go, pu, pu, pu to the baby. And Shifra would be the one who would hold the baby and massage the baby into being a beautiful baby. But it was really Yocheved and Miriam, not their names. Even when the parents of Moshe get married, they do it anonymously. The man from the house of Levi goes and takes a daughter of Levi. The point is, the whole beginning there is the stripping down of names, and it becomes a nameless reality. Men are in names. That's why a married woman generally takes on her husband's name. Whether we like it or not, that's the way it works. The Chumash, for sure, the names come down through the men. The familial, because the male aspect of things is a kind of identity that comes through the specific. And he thinks that what he is going to do is to enslave them by getting rid of the men But the pasuk says the most amazing thing, it says, Kaasher yaanu oto. Kain yirbe, vkein yifrotz (34:18) The more he made them ani, literally it means the more he made them suffer, but literally it means the more he made them ani, so the more they became fruitful and multiplied. The darn thing didn't work. And the reason is because what he was doing was unwittingly actually bringing forth in the Jewish people their primal beginning, which is the at one-ness with life and their commitment to it. That's all. So the more he made them ani, the more he was creating the lechem oni, which would be their root to redemption.  The more he stripped away their specific identity, so the more he put them in contact with their ultimate and final humility. And as they rested in that, so there was no destroying them. He unwittingly liberated them by doing that which, in his thinking, would be that which would destroy them. This is what the Rabbis mean when they say that the women, the Tzidkaniot, were the source of the redemption. Because they would go out to their husbands in the field, and their husbands who were completely despairing of life, because what's the good of bringing life if it's just going to be destroyed and not go anywhere? Well, just have some of this fish, well they just drop their eggs and it goes where it goes. Just be fruitful and multiply, the ones who were created with blessing, the first blessing, to be fruitful and multiply. Simple. Just life, being. And Moshe is born out of that. That's the reality that produces Moshe, about whom it says that he was good. And the Rabbis said, oh, we've been there. That's the first light that He saw, and it was good. Just be. That's Moshe. He would be the one who manifests the true anavah which is his primary trait. He is the anav mi kol adam, the lechem oni, which came from the very man who was m'aneh otam, who impoverished them, stripped them down to their more basic being. That's what we're eating when we're eating the matzah. That's why it's the bread of liberation. Because it's the bread of impoverishment, the bread of that most primal beginning. It's like eating the light.                 There's a price you pay to stay there, and Moshe Rabbeinu pays a price. He gains the greatest access to what being is as it begins because it holds there so then he can see the forms that are created through G-d's will as they are realized in the worlds and knows the patterns and the right living that will most reflect the true patterns of life because he stands from that perspective and comes down from there. As the Arizal teaches, he is the yesod chochmah, he is the conduit who brings the wisdom, in the deep sense of wisdom that we spoke of; he knows the what-ness, as he declares, anachnu mah, down into the world. But he also pays a price in that, in that he can't really hold a marriage. He doesn't stay married, because he stays devoid of those particaulr forms. It's a painful price. But it's the one when the Rambam says is paid when G-d tells Moshe when he comes down from the mountain, Tell the people to go back to their tents. And Moshe Rabbeinu says, in the midrash, the Rambam brings it down, And me? Do I go back to the tent? And G-d says, Lo, atah poh imadi. No, you stay standing here with Me. And at that point he is no longer able to return to the tent which is the particulars and specific forms withon which people live. Each one of us in our own tent of reality as it's defined and bounded. But that great revelation, which he brought us, which comes from there and is brought down into the creation of Torah, came from the beginning of Pesach. And only from there can the Jewish people begin its travels. And only from there can we every year return to that reality which is the reality of perfect anavah of Avraham. Like we spoke last week, the pleasure of that place, it's hard to shake. The resting in that. And the task of moving beyond that and moving out into realization and specificity means, on a certain level, either giving up the oneg, which is the depiction of the feeling that's associated with that, passing that up or somehow knowing the path to carry that with into all the aspects of life that I'm living. Simcha, at the other end of the spectrum, which is where David, not Avraham, is, is exhuberant joyousness,  that's very much in life, that's David dancing up a storm, embodied completely in the bringing of the aron to the Beit Hamikdash, that G-d would be embodied, ki v'ychol, in this place in Jerusalem. But oneg is a very delicate bliss, a pleasure of just being in contact with the all. It's very dear and crucial, and produces as a root, all the other good midot, traits, that are lived from there. And so they almost begin from Avraham's anavah.                 And then, what this allows for, what happens most beautifully by virtue of that pleasure with Him is a great loving of the one who is Himself that ground of being. And this is the truth of Avraham ohavi, Avraham my lover, Avraham who is in his primary consciousness and primary being at one with that. It's at a certain level, it's reflected in a midrash which is told about Moshe, which, the Talmud says about Moshe, who is in a certain aspect a counterpart of Avraham, and kabbalistically so, if you know the midot, so you know that on the right side, Avraham's side, is chochmah, and beneath it is chesed, and beneath it is netzach. And Moshe comes out of chochmah and is ultimately revealed in netzach. He belongs to that right side, the side of the greatest expansiveness, in the touching of it all, in the non-specificity of a particular identity. The great bliss of that. The great liberating bliss which is that. So Moshe reflects this in a beautiful description which gives a picture of him. It's a story told by Rebbe Yehoshua Ben Levi, a master of Aggadah. B'sha'ah she yarad moshe m'lifnei hakadosh baruch hu. When Moshe went down from before G-d, so the Satan came and said before G-d, Ribbono shel Olam, where did the Torah go? Where's the Torah. So, G-d syas, well, I gave it to the earth. So he went to the earth and said, Where's Torah? So the earth of course said, Well, Only G-d knows. Elohim hevin darkah. So he went to the waters and the waters said, It is not with me. So he went to the depths. She said, It's not in me. As it says, Tehom amar lo bi hi. Ki yam amar eyn imadi. So he continues and he goes to avadom and mavet. He goes to desolation, nothingness and death. They say, listen carefully, Ozneinu shamanu shimah. We heard about it. As if he's getting closer. Chaza v'amar lifnei Hakadosh baruch hu, so he went back to G-d and he said, Ribbono shel Olam, I've sought everywhere in all the land and I did not find it. So G-d says, Go to ben amram. That's Moshe. Halach etzel Moshe. Amar lo: Torah she natan hakadosh baruch hu, the Torah that G-d gave you, where is it? Amar lo, B'chi ma ani, she natan li ha kadosh baruch hu ha torah. What am I that G-d should give me Torah? It's a beautiful double meaning. What am I that G-d should give me Torah. Of course, the Satan understood that as what am I that G-d should give me Torah? But it also is likely, I believe, that Rebbe Yehoshua may be saying, it's also a statement. What am I that G-d should give me Torah—as he declares about himself. And this is why, by the way, avadon and mavat had heard about her. Yam hadn't, yabashah hadn't, tehom hadn't, but avadom? Avadom knows Torah, because the depth of Torah is expression of being as it is. And it is, at its root, the desolation of non-specificity. It's death. So death knows Torah, because it's prior to the forms in its origin. So she's heard about it. So then he goes to Moshe and he says, Mah ani, that Torah should be given to me. So Satan, who doesn't know about mah, who stands in the opposite end of the spectrum of the yetzer harah, that insists on particular forms as ultimate expression and ultimate being, doesn't really get what Moshe's saying, and so he goes back to Hakadosh Baruch Hu, so amar lo hakadosh baruch hu, I mean, the story isn't told that he goes back to Hakadosh Baruch Hu; Hakadosh Baruch Hu immediately responds to this. Amar lo hakadosh baruch hu l'moshe: Moshe. Badai atah. Moshe, you're a prankster. Meaning, you're like a faker. Amar l'fanav, ribono shel olam, chamud u'gnuza yesh lecha. Please, You have the most darling hidden beauty that is with You, she atah mishtasheah bchol yom. That you play with, take pleasure in every day in a sha'ashua, in a child-like playing. Meaning that it's not purposefully-oriented, it's just the pleasure of it. Ani achzik tovah l'atzmi? I'm going to take the tov, that good, as if It's mine, as if it's by me? It's not by me, it's in pleasure, in the underlying primal being which is pleasure. How would I say that is something own and (sic) (52:57) by me when the Satan came to me it was exactly right but the beauty of it was that he was joking. He made like a game out of it. But that's exactly the consciousness, the game, the play. Amar lo hakadosh baruch hu l'moshe: hoilu ata ta latzmecha, Because you made yourself small, Tikareh et shimcha, It's going to be called by your name. And so all of the prohecies that were ever given that end in Malachi, chapter three, end in Zichru Torat Moshe avdi. Remember the Torah of Moshe my servant, it's called by his name. But it's only called by his name because he gave up his name. You can only be called by the name of one whose very name simply means that he was pulled out of the waters. He was pulled out of the simplest, and the most undefined and unformed realness which becomes manifest in this wrold in the waters. That's Moshe.                 But Moshe is the same reality where the expressed and manifest reality which Avraham began as the ever mah. And so, when he's told by the Satan, I heard it's by you, he said, bchi mah ani she yiten li Torah. It's that particular aspect of Avraham which becomes revealed to him through his anavah, which is actually the root of his ability to be the one who would conduit (sic) this most primal impriture of what reality is into life as he does.                 So Avraham's so-to-speak preparation for being able to say Anochi afar v'efer was in telling Sarah, Quick, make up some matzot. It's the time of matzot, it's the time of being in the simple being, and from there to derive the commitment to life, which is the life of Avraham and the love of all, which is what the love of G-d from that reality is. Because you can't love G-d without loving all. How would you love G-d without loving all, if your consciousness is not of a G-d who is other, but rather one within Whom you are and all is not only embedded, but is actually simply the formation into forms of. There would be no possible way that the distinction would happen such that you would then distinguish between lowly people and highly (sic) people, between people of status in stature and name, and those who were down in the dumps, and even though, of course, we're called upon coming into this world, being here and relating to and dealing with and living out all that life gives us in all of its different aspects—the will of G-d is such that we should live all of that. When we are able to continue drawing from that reality of mah, then all of the worlds that then unfold from there, become worlds rooted in pleasure, shaashua, rooted in the enjoyment of the playing with, that is G-d's pleasure in Torah, and then become the life that Avraham expresses which is a life of love of all and of life itself.                 If I could share a beautiful juxtaposition of two mishnayot in the fourth chapter I mentioned last time. One is Rebbe Yaditas, ish Yavneh, who says, in Misha four, Meod meod havesh fal ruach. Be of a very lowly and humbly spirit, She tikra enosh rimah.  And we described last time how the Rambam actually gave us a picture of a man who urinated on him. And the reason for that is not chas v'shalom because we Jews love denigration for the suffering that it brings. But because that denigration put him in contact with what it is to be stripped of all the appelations, to return to just being matzah. That's what the depth of anavah is. So meod meod havesh fal ruach. But this mishnah follows another one which is that one which says, Al tihi baz l'chol adam v'al timaflid lchol davar, Never despise any human being and never push away any object. She ein lecha adam she ein lo sha'ah. For there is no man who doesn't have his hour. V'ein davar she ein lo hamakom. And there is no thing which does not have its place. And in a sense this is an instruction for a path. And it's really true, and I'm going to say it in it's most simplest way. There is no human being who doesn't have his moment, because there is nothing in this world whose manifest reality is not a manifestation of reality. So there is no one who will not have a moment in which he is fully realized. To push anyone away and to despise anyone is to despise that truth of his rootedness in being. But there is something else which speaks very strongly to me and I know it to be true: There is no  person who, if you don't give him an hour, will not become someone who you're not baz. Their real hour, not an hour in which he is arguing egoically. But to spend time with a person and to uncover their deepest aspirations, to give him a focus, and the time, in shiflut ruach, from yourself. There is no person who, in that hour, will not show you something of the beauty of the being that speaks through them.  Of course, there are some bad people out there; some of them take more than an hour, or at least you need to know how, but in a loving an shafel way, in this shiflus and anavah, so then it will bring out the level of the beauty and perfection of being that rests in them too. And so these two mishnayot come together beautifully, because lest you think that Meod meod havesh fal ruach means ignore the forms, forget about them they don't matter, then let me tell you something: Never despise a person, because he has surely his moment, his special reflection and special revelation. Having one will not allow you to let go of the other. But as we've seen, that's farther down the line. But the starting point has to be in that kind of a unity, which is the consciousness of Avraham, then all of the particular forms which derive from that come with all of the beauty and glory which they deserve with the honor and the reverence which they arouse which are the midot that come after that, the reverence being Yitzchak, and the beauty being Yaakov, which is what makes things beautiful when you see how all of being becomes reflected and expressed through this particaulr part of the organismic whole. And then finally the glory of each human being which is in their reflection of their joyous expression and their creativity which is their gift that we're all invited to express and live and take, which is David through Yehudah and Leah.                 You know, Avraham sent his gifts to the east. On a certain level, I understand why they took them.   The Brahmans, the reflection of Avraham, it's the nirvanic consciousness of a pure being. But you know what Rashi says about them? He gave them names of impurity, shemot tum'ah. That's what it is for us, to be rooted there is the root of life. But to stay there is the nail of death. Avraham without Yitzcahk, without yirah, becomes the avadon and the mavet, I've heard about the Torah, but I've never lived its embodied life. It's in the experience of G-d's turning to make space, that there should be other. It's in the contacting G-d's own, so to speak, al korch'cha atah chai. By force you shall live, that His will that there should be an other at the beginning of a real life of love of other is made possible. We'll stop here (and just stay here for a few hours, too!)                 (If the brothers in the east, their connection is through Avraham without fear of Hashem. Why is fear of Hashem necessary, because they live well, all of those Eastern philophies, I used to be very interested in those; you do create life, you can get married, have children, you can have amazing moments of fulfillment, you can do service for others.) I don't know a lot about Eastern religions or practices. I just have a sense from the little access to this that I have that the perception that there is a level of life which is a game, really a sha'ashuah, derives from holding that consciousness without that reverence and respect for the realness of the creative world. And this I believe is our primary difference. It's a big difference. Because our knowing of life is of willful creation that G-d wanted this here, that it's not some sort of unfolded derivative, but it's a willful creation. So though we know that on a level it's an illusion in the sense that the primal realness is the oneness of all being, nevertheless, that illusion is willed in love. That-is-so-marvelous. Because it means that everything that we live, see and know, is sent to us by the One Who in love chose to create a consciousness that would see all of this as separate, different and happening and becoming and making the space for you.                 I once had a conversation with someone who is deep in Buddhism. Maybe I'm missing something, but we were taking a walk in a very beautiful place and I said, just tell me something—Why is all this beautiful? What is that for you? And what it is for me, it's tiferet, in the sense that after there's the withdrawal, so after, there's a creative consciousness which finds beauty and connectedness, which is what beauty does, in the sense of the attractiveness and loveliness of all that is. So again, I don't know what lies they live. But I think I have a sense of something of the perspective. Though there is much speaking of compassion there, real compassion? Not from, of oh, nebuch, you're missing the point. But real compassion in the sense that this is something birthed, rachamim in our language, we spoke of this when we talked of Yaakov, that real compassion comes from exactly the kind of thing that Azai said. That everything has its place that is willed and desired by a loving Creator. Rooted in the simplicity of being. But it's here, meant to be here. This is something this time of year with Amalek, who is saying, well, all you're seeing is just a product of your mind. Here, let me just give you just a little bit of wine, and see if you'll still see things the way you're used to. (Sounding drunk) Here, we'll just get you into the right state, you wouldn't see anything at all. So what the heck do you think you're looking at? Do you think that's real? It's all mikreh, by-products of a lower consciousness. Mikreh, meaning it's chance, in the sense, it's just by-products of a lower consciousness that doesn't really see the truth. That's Amalek. He says to you, who have been spit out by the cloud. You see now? All the things you think about as being real are not. (It's true but it's also not true.) It's true in that it's all simple being. It's not true in that G-d has chosen that it should be seen this way and lived this way as an act of love that should allow for love in a relationship. The important point is olam chesed yibanah, he created it out of love. That's the transition point which happens when Avraham then comes into that realization at the moment his son is going to be taken away from him at the akeidah. That he's told, You're going to lose your only son. Then he realizes the lovingness from G-d in having given him an only son, someone specific and particular, and that's real and it's meant to be real. That's his awakening from the loving of the specific. That's Yitzchak, who is the man of awe and reverence. Do you feel like I answered you? (We were just talking about Moshe, at the cost of the seeing the true reflection of the  pattern, of the what-ness. That he couldn't keep a marriage because he couldn't hold onto the form because he was paying the price of being a conduit. So my question is, Why is Moshe the one who gets mad? He gets upset. It seems that being the conduit, seeing the real form and pattern, and we know that being angry is something we shouldn't do, so why did he get mad?) I don't think I could explain why he got mad, but he did. (Laughing). He was human. And it was a falling. And in that falling, so he (What do we learn from that?)  I've been there and talked about that, last Purim we were very deep in that as Patience and Anger on Purim. I'll send you a link but I'm just not there right now.

Allâhu ta'âlâ created Paradise and Hell. He declared that He will fill them both. A great many human beings and genies will go to Hell. But he will put most of the creatures into Paradise, thus His mercy will exceed His wrath. Genies are more than ten times as many as human beings, and angels are more than ten times as – 268 –many as genies. Since all the angels will be in Paradise, creatures in Paradise will be more numerous. Who will remain in Hell eternally? Those who do not perform salât? Those who commit sins? No! The enemies of Allâhu ta'âlâ will burn eternally in Hell. The Muslims who committed sins are not Allah's enemies. They are guilty human beings. They are like a naughty, guilty child. Will parents become an enemy towards their naughty child? Hell consists of seven levels. The first level is the least vehement. But it is seventy times as vehement as worldly fire. Its name is Jahannam. Here, a group of the Muslims will be purfied of their sins. Heretical people will certainly be burned in Hell for some time. Kâdî Zâde Ahmed Emîn Bey, who revised the book Vasiyyetnâme by Imâm-i Muhammed Birgivî, says: “The Muslim who will get out of Hell last will have burned for seven thousand years with the time measurement of the Hereafter. One year of the Hereafter is as long as a thousand worldly years.” The second level of Hell is more vehement. Its name is Sa'îr, People who interpolated the Torah will burn there [Ibni 'Âbidîn]. These people do not believe in Hadrat Îsâ (Jesus), who is Allah's Prophet, and they slander this great Prophet by saying, “the son of an unknown father.” They changed the Tawrât, thus defiling Allah's book, and after Hadrat Mûsâ, they martyred one thousand Prophets who were sent to advise them. People who changed the Bible will burn in the lower third level of Hell called “Seqar” which is more vehement. For, they did not follow Hadrat Îsâ's commands and denied him by interpolating the Injîl (Bible). In addition, they have become worse than Jews – they have even become polytheists – by saying that there are three gods and that Îsâ is God [Ibni 'Âbidîn]. [Some of them say that Jesus is the son of God.] Îsâwîs (real believers of Hadrat 'Îsâ) were not polytheists before Christianity was defiled and idolatry was mixed with it. Jews are farther away from Islam. [Ma'rifatnâma and Tazkira-i Qurtubî] In the fourth level called “Jahîm,” those who worship the sun or the stars will be hurled. In the fifth level called “Hutamah,” those who worship fire or the ox will go. Buddhists and Brahmans will be tortured in the sixth level called “Lazy,” along with those with no religion, and polytheists. In the seventh level called “Hâwiyah,” the very bottom, the most vehement level of Hell, munâfiqs and murtadds will burn. The order of these seven levels is not the same in the books Tafsiri Mazharî and Gâliyya. A person's going to Hell, that is, his being a disbeliever, becomes known at his last breath, when he dies. If an unbeliever, that is, a man without îmân, becomes a Muslim, or if a Muslim with many sins and crimes, or who is a holder of bid'at, repents, all such people become pure Muslims. They will not go to Hell. Endless Bliss First Fasicle | Page 268-270

“But the true guru, you know, the Buddha came and turned all that inside out. You know the Buddha taught the Four Noble Truths and the word he used, “the Noble,” that came out of that, like the Brahmans were the Nobles. But the Buddha was like, no, the Nobles aren't, it's not that priest over there, lighting the fire, the sacred fire, the noble thing is like your own ethic, your own internal ethic, your own loving heart is the noble thing. The Buddha was all about that. He was a good, you know, cognitive therapist in that way, turning, turning people's concepts inside out.” So says Mark Epstein, a psychiatrist and Buddhist who has written several brilliant and beautiful books about the Venn diagram of meditation and therapy. In his latest: THE ZEN OF THERAPY, he reveals more of his own backstory, how as a young med school student trying to bridge the gap between his role as a doctor and his love of Eastern spirituality he came to help Dr. Benson study meditation and its benefits for the body. He opens the books though, by explaining that meditation is not a panacea, it is instead a rare opportunity to get quiet with yourself, to observe your own mind, and to process your emotions. In the ZEN OF THERAPY, Mark recounts a year of therapy sessions where he was able to provide psychotherapy paired WITH Buddhist insights—it's a wonderful and fascinating book—I personally LOVE reading about peoples' therapy sessions—and it offers many takeaways for anyone, including the ways in which we fixate on our childhoods rather than focusing on the evolution of our own identities, and where our own resistance to change can point the way to healing. OK, let's get to our conversation. MORE FROM MARK EPSTEIN, M.D. THE ZEN OF THERAPY by Mark Epstein, M.D. ADVICE NOT GIVEN by Mark Epstein, M.D. THE TRAUMA OF EVERYDAY LIFE by Mark Epstein, M.D. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

View our full collection of podcasts at our website:  https://www.solgood.org/ or YouTube channel: www.solgood.org/subscribe

The Season 3 premiere for Echoes of India returns us to the vibrant world of ancient India. We'll meet the strange mix of peoples who together made the early cities of the Gangetic Plains, and set the stage for the extraordinary life which we'll follow this season: that of Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, one of the most important figures in the history of South Asia.Notes and sources will be available at https://www.anirudhkanisetti.com - sign up for updates!Follow Anirudh on Instagram @aniryuddha, @cholabhaturaempire, or @connectedhistories for even more irreverent, well-researched stories from South Asia's incredible history.You can listen to this show and other awesome shows on the IVM Podcasts app on Android: https://ivm.today/android or iOS: https://ivm.today/ios, or any other podcast app.You can check out our website at http://www.ivmpodcasts.com/

Ajahn Brahmali discusses the 41st sutta of the Majjhima Nikaya: Saleyyaka Sutta, “The People of Sala” or “The Brahmans of Sala”. Click here to read MN41 on Sutta Central.  “The Buddha explains to a group of brahmins the conduct leading to rebirth in higher or lower states, including detailed explanations of the ten core practices which lay people should undertake, and which also form the basis for liberation,” Sutta Central. Please support the BSWA in making teachings available for free online via Patreon. To find and download more precious Dhamma teachings, visit the BSWA teachings page: https://bswa.org/teachings/, choose the teaching you want and click on the audio to open it up on Podbean.

Jaye Hall is seen and known to be one of the most resilient and toughest females within the Equine and Cattle Industry. She can look dominant and some may even fear her while others strive to be like her. From crafting bronzes to handling yearlings, stud cattle and 2 Children. With Ben away most of the year, Jaye confronts the daily tasks mostly on her own with the kids very capable helping hands once schooling is completed for day. Make no mistake, Jaye is as humble as they come. Throughout this interview we get a glimpse of the daily struggles, triumphs and challenges. We hear a vulnerable whisper through her tone and the Mother guilt vibrate through her chest. We feel privileged to have Jaye share and expose this side to her for the world to see and hear. Enjoy Part 2 of Jaye Hall, we certainly enjoyed capturing it.

राजा प्रतापभानु को मिला ब्राह्मणो से एक कर्म के लिए श्राप जो उन्होंने कभी किया ही नहीं , क्या कारण था उस श्राप का और क्या उस श्राप के कारण हुआ रावण का जन्म| सुनिए इस दशहरा रावण का इतिहास , रावण, कुम्भकरण और विभीषण के पूर्व जन्म, जन्म, तपस्या से जुड़ी कई कहानियां और उनके जीवन से जुड़े अन्य कई अनसुने किस्से , पियूष अग्रवाल के साथ | Raja Pratap Bhanu got cursed from Brahmans for the deed which he never did. Was that curse the reason behind Raavn’s birth. Celebrate this Dussehra with Piyush Agarwal listening to some unheard stories related to rebirth, birth, tapasya and life of Raavan, Vibhishan & Kumbhkaran.

The Clementine scriptures are surviving Jewish-Christian writings from antiquity that represent the teachings of the Ebionites, a movement founded by Christ, and eventually lead by James the Just and his spiritual successors during the first few centuries AD. I was expecting this group to be very legalistic and tribal, believing that only they have access to the true God and spiritual Truth, but the reality turned out to be rather surprising! In Recognitions of Clement, Book 9, Chapter 20, "Brahmans", an Ebionite author has very nice things to say about their brothers and sisters in India who worship the One God, follow peaceful customs and laws, and are vegetarian or vegan. Ebionite One Love. Clearly he sees parallels between his own religion and those like-minded devotees and disciples residing “in the Indian countries.” (India was divided into many separate states or kingdoms 2,000 years ago.) It's one of the most amazing passages I know of in the extra-canonical apocryphal scriptures, as it is a rare example of one religion (Ebionite Christianity) recognizing “Truth” in another religion from elsewhere (Hinduism in India). Imagine that! A rare inter-faith moment in human history. And I just know the Ebionites would have really loved Kabir and the Sants of India that emerged during the medieval period. So I also share some key teachings of the Sant tradition, the Way of the Saints (Sant Mat), the Path of the Masters, very much in agreement with the Ebionites: 1) belief in, and meditation upon, the One God, 2) opposition to the worship of idols (all forms of idolatry), 3) opposition to ritual animal sacrifice in various religious temples, and 4) strictly adhering to a vegetarian (or even vegan) diet as part of their peaceful (ahimsa) ethical foundation for living.  

After talking with the Yogis Guru Nanak made his way to a huge pilgrimage site: Hariduar. Huge throngs of people were throwing water to the rising sun to honor their ancestors. Guru Nanak started throwing water in the opposite direction. A Brahman asked him what he was doing. He said, "I'm watering my fields in the Punjab, surely it will reach the Punjab before it reaches your ancestors.".....read more

Kommentar zum Viveka Chudamani, Vers 528. Sukadev interpretiert diesen Vers als Inspiration des Tages zum Thema: Genieße die Stille werde die Stille Brahman. Viveka Chudamani ist ein wichtiges Werk zu Vedanta. Es ist eine wichtige Grundlage für Jnana Yoga. Viveka Chudamani bedeutet das Kleinod (Chudamani) der Unterscheidung (Viveka). Dieses Werk wird dem großen Weisen und Philosophen Shankaracharya zugeschrieben.

Kommentar zum Viveka Chudamani, Vers 528. Sukadev interpretiert diesen Vers als Inspiration des Tages zum Thema: Genieße die Stille werde die Stille Brahman. Viveka Chudamani ist ein wichtiges Werk zu Vedanta. Es ist eine wichtige Grundlage für Jnana Yoga. Viveka Chudamani bedeutet das Kleinod (Chudamani) der Unterscheidung (Viveka). Dieses Werk wird dem großen Weisen und Philosophen Shankaracharya zugeschrieben.

The history of Indian religions in the centuries leading up to the common era has been characterized in the scholarship by two distinct overarching traditions: the Brahmans (associated with Vedic texts, caste, and Vedic rituals) and the renouncer (śramaṇa) movements we see in the Upanishads, and in Jainism and Buddhism. Were these traditions at odds with each other as “snake and mongoose” (attributed to the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali)? Does “Brahmanism” pre-exist this pivotal encounter, or as it in fact forged therefrom? Was there such a thing, e.g., as a Buddhist Brahman in this era? In his book The Snake and The Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nathan McGovern draws on ancient texts to problematize the distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman in this era, shedding light on the presence of various Buddhist, Jain and Vedic groups who equally identified as Brahmans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of Indian religions in the centuries leading up to the common era has been characterized in the scholarship by two distinct overarching traditions: the Brahmans (associated with Vedic texts, caste, and Vedic rituals) and the renouncer (śramaṇa) movements we see in the Upanishads, and in Jainism and Buddhism.  Were these traditions at odds with each other as “snake and mongoose” (attributed to the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali)?  Does “Brahmanism” pre-exist this pivotal encounter, or as it in fact forged therefrom? Was there such a thing, e.g., as a Buddhist Brahman in this era?  In his book The Snake and The Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nathan McGovern draws on ancient texts to problematize the distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman in this era, shedding light on the presence of various Buddhist, Jain and Vedic groups who equally identified as Brahmans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of Indian religions in the centuries leading up to the common era has been characterized in the scholarship by two distinct overarching traditions: the Brahmans (associated with Vedic texts, caste, and Vedic rituals) and the renouncer (śramaṇa) movements we see in the Upanishads, and in Jainism and Buddhism.  Were these traditions at odds with each other as “snake and mongoose” (attributed to the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali)?  Does “Brahmanism” pre-exist this pivotal encounter, or as it in fact forged therefrom? Was there such a thing, e.g., as a Buddhist Brahman in this era?  In his book The Snake and The Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nathan McGovern draws on ancient texts to problematize the distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman in this era, shedding light on the presence of various Buddhist, Jain and Vedic groups who equally identified as Brahmans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of Indian religions in the centuries leading up to the common era has been characterized in the scholarship by two distinct overarching traditions: the Brahmans (associated with Vedic texts, caste, and Vedic rituals) and the renouncer (śramaṇa) movements we see in the Upanishads, and in Jainism and Buddhism.  Were these traditions at odds with each other as “snake and mongoose” (attributed to the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali)?  Does “Brahmanism” pre-exist this pivotal encounter, or as it in fact forged therefrom? Was there such a thing, e.g., as a Buddhist Brahman in this era?  In his book The Snake and The Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nathan McGovern draws on ancient texts to problematize the distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman in this era, shedding light on the presence of various Buddhist, Jain and Vedic groups who equally identified as Brahmans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of Indian religions in the centuries leading up to the common era has been characterized in the scholarship by two distinct overarching traditions: the Brahmans (associated with Vedic texts, caste, and Vedic rituals) and the renouncer (śramaṇa) movements we see in the Upanishads, and in Jainism and Buddhism.  Were these traditions at odds with each other as “snake and mongoose” (attributed to the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali)?  Does “Brahmanism” pre-exist this pivotal encounter, or as it in fact forged therefrom? Was there such a thing, e.g., as a Buddhist Brahman in this era?  In his book The Snake and The Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nathan McGovern draws on ancient texts to problematize the distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman in this era, shedding light on the presence of various Buddhist, Jain and Vedic groups who equally identified as Brahmans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of Indian religions in the centuries leading up to the common era has been characterized in the scholarship by two distinct overarching traditions: the Brahmans (associated with Vedic texts, caste, and Vedic rituals) and the renouncer (śramaṇa) movements we see in the Upanishads, and in Jainism and Buddhism.  Were these traditions at odds with each other as “snake and mongoose” (attributed to the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali)?  Does “Brahmanism” pre-exist this pivotal encounter, or as it in fact forged therefrom? Was there such a thing, e.g., as a Buddhist Brahman in this era?  In his book The Snake and The Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nathan McGovern draws on ancient texts to problematize the distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman in this era, shedding light on the presence of various Buddhist, Jain and Vedic groups who equally identified as Brahmans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The history of Indian religions in the centuries leading up to the common era has been characterized in the scholarship by two distinct overarching traditions: the Brahmans (associated with Vedic texts, caste, and Vedic rituals) and the renouncer (śramaṇa) movements we see in the Upanishads, and in Jainism and Buddhism.  Were these traditions at odds with each other as “snake and mongoose” (attributed to the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali)?  Does “Brahmanism” pre-exist this pivotal encounter, or as it in fact forged therefrom? Was there such a thing, e.g., as a Buddhist Brahman in this era?  In his book The Snake and The Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nathan McGovern draws on ancient texts to problematize the distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman in this era, shedding light on the presence of various Buddhist, Jain and Vedic groups who equally identified as Brahmans.

The history of Indian religions in the centuries leading up to the common era has been characterized in the scholarship by two distinct overarching traditions: the Brahmans (associated with Vedic texts, caste, and Vedic rituals) and the renouncer (śramaṇa) movements we see in the Upanishads, and in Jainism and Buddhism.  Were these traditions at odds with each other as “snake and mongoose” (attributed to the 2nd-century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Patañjali)?  Does “Brahmanism” pre-exist this pivotal encounter, or as it in fact forged therefrom? Was there such a thing, e.g., as a Buddhist Brahman in this era?  In his book The Snake and The Mongoose: The Emergence of Identity in Early Indian Religion (Oxford University Press, 2018), Nathan McGovern draws on ancient texts to problematize the distinction between Brahman and non-Brahman in this era, shedding light on the presence of various Buddhist, Jain and Vedic groups who equally identified as Brahmans. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Das Bewusstseins Brahmans. Lesung und Kommentar von Sukadev Bretz, Gründer und Leiter von Yoga Vidya. http://www.yoga-vidya.de

Sukadev spricht in diesem Vortrag über den 58. Vers aus dem Atma Bodha, der Vedanta Schrift von Shankaracharya. Atma bedeutetSelbst, Bodha bedeutet Erkenntnis. Im Atma Bodha geht es also um die Erkenntnisdes Selbst. Dieser Vers hat als Hauptthema: Unbegrenzte Glückseligkeit. Auf deutsch lautet der Vers: Gottheiten wie Brahma und andere kosten nur einen Teil der unbegrenzten Glückseligkeit Brahmans und genießen entsprechend ihren Anteil daran. Dies ist ein Vortrag von und mit Sukadev Bretz, Gründer und Leiter von Yoga Vidya. Dieser Vortrag ist die Audiospur eines Videos zum Atma Bodha.In diesem Audio-Vortrag rezitiert Sukadev den Sanskritvers, liest die Übersetzung und gibt gibt einen Kommentar zu diesem Vers. Atma Bodha Portal- mit Devanagari, Sanskrit Text, Übersetzung, Kommentar und Videos Das ganze Atma Bodha mit Sanskrit Text und Übersetzung Atma Bodha als Buch bestellen Jnana Yoga und Vedanta Seminare

Sukadev spricht in diesem Vortrag über den 58. Vers aus dem Atma Bodha, der Vedanta Schrift von Shankaracharya. Atma bedeutetSelbst, Bodha bedeutet Erkenntnis, die Erkenntnis des Selbst. Hauptthema: Unbegrenzte Glückseligkeit. Deutsche Übersetzung dieses Verses: Gottheiten wie Brahma und andere kosten nur einen Teil der unbegrenzten Glückseligkeit Brahmans und genießen entsprechend ihren Anteil daran. Eine Inspiration des Tages von und mit Sukadev Bretz, Gründer von Yoga Vidya. Mehr Infos: Videos zum Atma Bodha Jnana Yoga und Vedanta Seminare Atma Bodha Buch kaufen Atma Bodha Portal Text Atma Bodha Online lesen Atma Bodha Podcast, Atma Bodha, Shankara, Shankaracharya, Sukadev, Podcast, Der Beitrag Unbegrenzte Glückseligkeit- AtBo 58 erschien zuerst auf Yoga Vidya Blog - Yoga, Meditation und Ayurveda.

Das Sanskritwort Kumara, auf Hindi Kumar, bedeutet Kind, Junge und Sohn. Man spricht auch von den vier Kumaras, den vier Söhnen Brahmans, unter denen Sanatkumara eine besondere Bedeutung hat. Die vier Kumaras wurden von Shiva in seiner Form als Dakshinamurti unterwiesen und haben eine wichtige Sampradaya, spirituelle Tradition, begründet. Kumara steht auch für Subrahmanya bzw. … „Kumara – Kind, Junge, Sohn – Sanskrit Audio Wörterbuch“ weiterlesen

Om ist die heilige Silbe. Om ist Symbol für Brahman, das Absolute. Der Yoga Weise Patanjali sagt im Yoga Sutra, dass die Wiederholung von Om zur Erfahrung Ishwaras, Gottes führt, erleuchtete Innenschau ermöglicht und alle Hindernisse überwindet. Zahlreiche Schriften sprechen über Om, darunter die Mandukya Upanishad und die Bhagavad Gita. Mehr über Om erfährst du … „Om – heilige Silbe Brahmans“ weiterlesen

The Melchizedek Teachings in the Orient (1027.1) 94:0.1 THE early teachers of the Salem religion penetrated to the remotest tribes of Africa and Eurasia, ever preaching Machiventa’s gospel of man’s faith and trust in the one universal God as the only price of obtaining divine favor. Melchizedek’s covenant with Abraham was the pattern for all the early propaganda that went out from Salem and other centers. Urantia has never had more enthusiastic and aggressive missionaries of any religion than these noble men and women who carried the teachings of Melchizedek over the entire Eastern Hemisphere. These missionaries were recruited from many peoples and races, and they largely spread their teachings through the medium of native converts. They established training centers in different parts of the world where they taught the natives the Salem religion and then commissioned these pupils to function as teachers among their own people. 1. The Salem Teachings in Vedic India (1027.2) 94:1.1 In the days of Melchizedek, India was a cosmopolitan country which had recently come under the political and religious dominance of the Aryan-Andite invaders from the north and west. At this time only the northern and western portions of the peninsula had been extensively permeated by the Aryans. These Vedic newcomers had brought along with them their many tribal deities. Their religious forms of worship followed closely the ceremonial practices of their earlier Andite forebears in that the father still functioned as a priest and the mother as a priestess, and the family hearth was still utilized as an altar. (1027.3) 94:1.2 The Vedic cult was then in process of growth and metamorphosis under the direction of the Brahman caste of teacher-priests, who were gradually assuming control over the expanding ritual of worship. The amalgamation of the onetime thirty-three Aryan deities was well under way when the Salem missionaries penetrated the north of India. (1027.4) 94:1.3 The polytheism of these Aryans represented a degeneration of their earlier monotheism occasioned by their separation into tribal units, each tribe having its venerated god. This devolution of the original monotheism and trinitarianism of Andite Mesopotamia was in process of resynthesis in the early centuries of the second millennium before Christ. The many gods were organized into a pantheon under the triune leadership of Dyaus pitar, the lord of heaven; Indra, the tempestuous lord of the atmosphere; and Agni, the three-headed fire god, lord of the earth and the vestigial symbol of an earlier Trinity concept. (1027.5) 94:1.4 Definite henotheistic developments were paving the way for an evolved monotheism. Agni, the most ancient deity, was often exalted as the father-head of the entire pantheon. The deity-father principle, sometimes called Prajapati, sometimes termed Brahma, was submerged in the theologic battle which the Brahman priests later fought with the Salem teachers. The Brahman was conceived as the energy-divinity principle activating the entire Vedic pantheon. (1028.1) 94:1.5 The Salem missionaries preached the one God of Melchizedek, the Most High of heaven. This portrayal was not altogether disharmonious with the emerging concept of the Father-Brahma as the source of all gods, but the Salem doctrine was nonritualistic and hence ran directly counter to the dogmas, traditions, and teachings of the Brahman priesthood. Never would the Brahman priests accept the Salem teaching of salvation through faith, favor with God apart from ritualistic observances and sacrificial ceremonials. (1028.2) 94:1.6 The rejection of the Melchizedek gospel of trust in God and salvation through faith marked a vital turning point for India. The Salem missionaries had contributed much to the loss of faith in all the ancient Vedic gods, but the leaders, the priests of Vedism, refused to accept the Melchizedek teaching of one God and one simple faith. (1028.3) 94:1.7 The Brahmans culled the sacred writings of their day in an effort to combat the Salem teachers, and this compilation, as later revised, has come on down to modern times as the Rig-Veda, one of the most ancient of sacred books. The second, third, and fourth Vedas followed as the Brahmans sought to crystallize, formalize, and fix their rituals of worship and sacrifice upon the peoples of those days. Taken at their best, these writings are the equal of any other body of similar character in beauty of concept and truth of discernment. But as this superior religion became contaminated with the thousands upon thousands of superstitions, cults, and rituals of southern India, it progressively metamorphosed into the most variegated system of theology ever developed by mortal man. An examination of the Vedas will disclose some of the highest and some of the most debased concepts of Deity ever to be conceived. 2. Brahmanism (1028.4) 94:2.1 As the Salem missionaries penetrated southward into the Dravidian Deccan, they encountered an increasing caste system, the scheme of the Aryans to prevent loss of racial identity in the face of a rising tide of the secondary Sangik peoples. Since the Brahman priest caste was the very essence of this system, this social order greatly retarded the progress of the Salem teachers. This caste system failed to save the Aryan race, but it did succeed in perpetuating the Brahmans, who, in turn, have maintained their religious hegemony in India to the present time. (1028.5) 94:2.2 And now, with the weakening of Vedism through the rejection of higher truth, the cult of the Aryans became subject to increasing inroads from the Deccan. In a desperate effort to stem the tide of racial extinction and religious obliteration, the Brahman caste sought to exalt themselves above all else. They taught that the sacrifice to deity in itself was all-efficacious, that it was all-compelling in its potency. They proclaimed that, of the two essential divine principles of the universe, one was Brahman the deity, and the other was the Brahman priesthood. Among no other Urantia peoples did the priests presume to exalt themselves above even their gods, to relegate to themselves the honors due their gods. But they went so absurdly far with these presumptuous claims that the whole precarious system collapsed before the debasing cults which poured in from the surrounding and less advanced civilizations. The vast Vedic priesthood itself floundered and sank beneath the black flood of inertia and pessimism which their own selfish and unwise presumption had brought upon all India. (1029.1) 94:2.3 The undue concentration on self led certainly to a fear of the nonevolutionary perpetuation of self in an endless round of successive incarnations as man, beast, or weeds. And of all the contaminating beliefs which could have become fastened upon what may have been an emerging monotheism, none was so stultifying as this belief in transmigration — the doctrine of the reincarnation of souls — which came from the Dravidian Deccan. This belief in the weary and monotonous round of repeated transmigrations robbed struggling mortals of their long-cherished hope of finding that deliverance and spiritual advancement in death which had been a part of the earlier Vedic faith. (1029.2) 94:2.4 This philosophically debilitating teaching was soon followed by the invention of the doctrine of the eternal escape from self by submergence in the universal rest and peace of absolute union with Brahman, the oversoul of all creation. Mortal desire and human ambition were effectually ravished and virtually destroyed. For more than two thousand years the better minds of India have sought to escape from all desire, and thus was opened wide the door for the entrance of those later cults and teachings which have virtually shackled the souls of many Hindu peoples in the chains of spiritual hopelessness. Of all civilizations, the Vedic-Aryan paid the most terrible price for its rejection of the Salem gospel. (1029.3) 94:2.5 Caste alone could not perpetuate the Aryan religio-cultural system, and as the inferior religions of the Deccan permeated the north, there developed an age of despair and hopelessness. It was during these dark days that the cult of taking no life arose, and it has ever since persisted. Many of the new cults were frankly atheistic, claiming that such salvation as was attainable could come only by man’s own unaided efforts. But throughout a great deal of all this unfortunate philosophy, distorted remnants of the Melchizedek and even the Adamic teachings can be traced. (1029.4) 94:2.6 These were the times of the compilation of the later scriptures of the Hindu faith, the Brahmanas and the Upanishads. Having rejected the teachings of personal religion through the personal faith experience with the one God, and having become contaminated with the flood of debasing and debilitating cults and creeds from the Deccan, with their anthropomorphisms and reincarnations, the Brahmanic priesthood experienced a violent reaction against these vitiating beliefs; there was a definite effort to seek and to find true reality. The Brahmans set out to deanthropomorphize the Indian concept of deity, but in so doing they stumbled into the grievous error of depersonalizing the concept of God, and they emerged, not with a lofty and spiritual ideal of the Paradise Father, but with a distant and metaphysical idea of an all-encompassing Absolute. (1029.5) 94:2.7 In their efforts at self-preservation the Brahmans had rejected the one God of Melchizedek, and now they found themselves with the hypothesis of Brahman, that indefinite and illusive philosophic self, that impersonal and impotent it which has left the spiritual life of India helpless and prostrate from that unfortunate day to the twentieth century. (1029.6) 94:2.8 It was during the times of the writing of the Upanishads that Buddhism arose in India. But despite its successes of a thousand years, it could not compete with later Hinduism; despite a higher morality, its early portrayal of God was even less well-defined than was that of Hinduism, which provided for lesser and personal deities. Buddhism finally gave way in northern India before the onslaught of a militant Islam with its clear-cut concept of Allah as the supreme God of the universe. 3. Brahmanic Philosophy (1030.1) 94:3.1 While the highest phase of Brahmanism was hardly a religion, it was truly one of the most noble reaches of the mortal mind into the domains of philosophy and metaphysics. Having started out to discover final reality, the Indian mind did not stop until it had speculated about almost every phase of theology excepting the essential dual concept of religion: the existence of the Universal Father of all universe creatures and the fact of the ascending experience in the universe of these very creatures as they seek to attain the eternal Father, who has commanded them to be perfect, even as he is perfect. (1030.2) 94:3.2 In the concept of Brahman the minds of those days truly grasped at the idea of some all-pervading Absolute, for this postulate was at one and the same time identified as creative energy and cosmic reaction. Brahman was conceived to be beyond all definition, capable of being comprehended only by the successive negation of all finite qualities. It was definitely a belief in an absolute, even an infinite, being, but this concept was largely devoid of personality attributes and was therefore not experiencible by individual religionists. (1030.3) 94:3.3 Brahman-Narayana was conceived as the Absolute, the infinite IT IS, the primordial creative potency of the potential cosmos, the Universal Self existing static and potential throughout all eternity. Had the philosophers of those days been able to make the next advance in deity conception, had they been able to conceive of the Brahman as associative and creative, as a personality approachable by created and evolving beings, then might such a teaching have become the most advanced portraiture of Deity on Urantia since it would have encompassed the first five levels of total deity function and might possibly have envisioned the remaining two. (1030.4) 94:3.4 In certain phases the concept of the One Universal Oversoul as the totality of the summation of all creature existence led the Indian philosophers very close to the truth of the Supreme Being, but this truth availed them naught because they failed to evolve any reasonable or rational personal approach to the attainment of their theoretic monotheistic goal of Brahman-Narayana. (1030.5) 94:3.5 The karma principle of causality continuity is, again, very close to the truth of the repercussional synthesis of all time-space actions in the Deity presence of the Supreme; but this postulate never provided for the co-ordinate personal attainment of Deity by the individual religionist, only for the ultimate engulfment of all personality by the Universal Oversoul. (1030.6) 94:3.6 The philosophy of Brahmanism also came very near to the realization of the indwelling of the Thought Adjusters, only to become perverted through the misconception of truth. The teaching that the soul is the indwelling of the Brahman would have paved the way for an advanced religion had not this concept been completely vitiated by the belief that there is no human individuality apart from this indwelling of the Universal One. (1030.7) 94:3.7 In the doctrine of the merging of the self-soul with the Oversoul, the theologians of India failed to provide for the survival of something human, something new and unique, something born of the union of the will of man and the will of God. The teaching of the soul’s return to the Brahman is closely parallel to the truth of the Adjuster’s return to the bosom of the Universal Father, but there is something distinct from the Adjuster which also survives, the morontial counterpart of mortal personality. And this vital concept was fatally absent from Brahmanic philosophy. (1031.1) 94:3.8 Brahmanic philosophy has approximated many of the facts of the universe and has approached numerous cosmic truths, but it has all too often fallen victim to the error of failing to differentiate between the several levels of reality, such as absolute, transcendental, and finite. It has failed to take into account that what may be finite-illusory on the absolute level may be absolutely real on the finite level. And it has also taken no cognizance of the essential personality of the Universal Father, who is personally contactable on all levels from the evolutionary creature’s limited experience with God on up to the limitless experience of the Eternal Son with the Paradise Father. 4. The Hindu Religion (1031.2) 94:4.1 With the passing of the centuries in India, the populace returned in measure to the ancient rituals of the Vedas as they had been modified by the teachings of the Melchizedek missionaries and crystallized by the later Brahman priesthood. This, the oldest and most cosmopolitan of the world’s religions, has undergone further changes in response to Buddhism and Jainism and to the later appearing influences of Mohammedanism and Christianity. But by the time the teachings of Jesus arrived, they had already become so Occidentalized as to be a “white man’s religion,” hence strange and foreign to the Hindu mind. (1031.3) 94:4.2 Hindu theology, at present, depicts four descending levels of deity and divinity: (1031.4) 94:4.3 1. The Brahman, the Absolute, the Infinite One, the IT IS. (1031.5) 94:4.4 2. The Trimurti, the supreme trinity of Hinduism. In this association Brahma, the first member, is conceived as being self-created out of the Brahman — infinity. Were it not for close identification with the pantheistic Infinite One, Brahma could constitute the foundation for a concept of the Universal Father. Brahma is also identified with fate. (1031.6) 94:4.5 The worship of the second and third members, Siva and Vishnu, arose in the first millennium after Christ. Siva is lord of life and death, god of fertility, and master of destruction. Vishnu is extremely popular due to the belief that he periodically incarnates in human form. In this way, Vishnu becomes real and living in the imaginations of the Indians. Siva and Vishnu are each regarded by some as supreme over all. (1031.7) 94:4.6 3. Vedic and post-Vedic deities. Many of the ancient gods of the Aryans, such as Agni, Indra, Soma, have persisted as secondary to the three members of the Trimurti. Numerous additional gods have arisen since the early days of Vedic India, and these have also been incorporated into the Hindu pantheon. (1031.8) 94:4.7 4. The demigods: supermen, semigods, heroes, demons, ghosts, evil spirits, sprites, monsters, goblins, and saints of the later-day cults. (1031.9) 94:4.8 While Hinduism has long failed to vivify the Indian people, at the same time it has usually been a tolerant religion. Its great strength lies in the fact that it has proved to be the most adaptive, amorphic religion to appear on Urantia. It is capable of almost unlimited change and possesses an unusual range of flexible adjustment from the high and semimonotheistic speculations of the intellectual Brahman to the arrant fetishism and primitive cult practices of the debased and depressed classes of ignorant believers. (1032.1) 94:4.9 Hinduism has survived because it is essentially an integral part of the basic social fabric of India. It has no great hierarchy which can be disturbed or destroyed; it is interwoven into the life pattern of the people. It has an adaptability to changing conditions that excels all other cults, and it displays a tolerant attitude of adoption toward many other religions, Gautama Buddha and even Christ himself being claimed as incarnations of Vishnu. (1032.2) 94:4.10 Today, in India, the great need is for the portrayal of the Jesusonian gospel — the Fatherhood of God and the sonship and consequent brotherhood of all men, which is personally realized in loving ministry and social service. In India the philosophical framework is existent, the cult structure is present; all that is needed is the vitalizing spark of the dynamic love portrayed in the original gospel of the Son of Man, divested of the Occidental dogmas and doctrines which have tended to make Michael’s life bestowal a white man’s religion. 5. The Struggle for Truth in China (1032.3) 94:5.1 As the Salem missionaries passed through Asia, spreading the doctrine of the Most High God and salvation through faith, they absorbed much of the philosophy and religious thought of the various countries traversed. But the teachers commissioned by Melchizedek and his successors did not default in their trust; they did penetrate to all peoples of the Eurasian continent, and it was in the middle of the second millennium before Christ that they arrived in China. At See Fuch, for more than one hundred years, the Salemites maintained their headquarters, there training Chinese teachers who taught throughout all the domains of the yellow race. (1032.4) 94:5.2 It was in direct consequence of this teaching that the earliest form of Taoism arose in China, a vastly different religion than the one which bears that name today. Early or proto-Taoism was a compound of the following factors: (1032.5) 94:5.3 1. The lingering teachings of Singlangton, which persisted in the concept of Shang-ti, the God of Heaven. In the times of Singlangton the Chinese people became virtually monotheistic; they concentrated their worship on the One Truth, later known as the Spirit of Heaven, the universe ruler. And the yellow race never fully lost this early concept of Deity, although in subsequent centuries many subordinate gods and spirits insidiously crept into their religion. (1032.6) 94:5.4 2. The Salem religion of a Most High Creator Deity who would bestow his favor upon mankind in response to man’s faith. But it is all too true that, by the time the Melchizedek missionaries had penetrated to the lands of the yellow race, their original message had become considerably changed from the simple doctrines of Salem in the days of Machiventa. (1032.7) 94:5.5 3. The Brahman-Absolute concept of the Indian philosophers, coupled with the desire to escape all evil. Perhaps the greatest extraneous influence in the eastward spread of the Salem religion was exerted by the Indian teachers of the Vedic faith, who injected their conception of the Brahman — the Absolute — into the salvationistic thought of the Salemites. (1033.1) 94:5.6 This composite belief spread through the lands of the yellow and brown races as an underlying influence in religio-philosophic thought. In Japan this proto-Taoism was known as Shinto, and in this country, far-distant from Salem of Palestine, the peoples learned of the incarnation of Machiventa Melchizedek, who dwelt upon earth that the name of God might not be forgotten by mankind.* (1033.2) 94:5.7 In China all of these beliefs were later confused and compounded with the ever-growing cult of ancestor worship. But never since the time of Singlangton have the Chinese fallen into helpless slavery to priestcraft. The yellow race was the first to emerge from barbaric bondage into orderly civilization because it was the first to achieve some measure of freedom from the abject fear of the gods, not even fearing the ghosts of the dead as other races feared them. China met her defeat because she failed to progress beyond her early emancipation from priests; she fell into an almost equally calamitous error, the worship of ancestors. (1033.3) 94:5.8 But the Salemites did not labor in vain. It was upon the foundations of their gospel that the great philosophers of sixth-century China built their teachings. The moral atmosphere and the spiritual sentiments of the times of Lao-tse and Confucius grew up out of the teachings of the Salem missionaries of an earlier age. 6. Lao-Tse and Confucius (1033.4) 94:6.1 About six hundred years before the arrival of Michael, it seemed to Melchizedek, long since departed from the flesh, that the purity of his teaching on earth was being unduly jeopardized by general absorption into the older Urantia beliefs. It appeared for a time that his mission as a forerunner of Michael might be in danger of failing. And in the sixth century before Christ, through an unusual co-ordination of spiritual agencies, not all of which are understood even by the planetary supervisors, Urantia witnessed a most unusual presentation of manifold religious truth. Through the agency of several human teachers the Salem gospel was restated and revitalized, and as it was then presented, much has persisted to the times of this writing. (1033.5) 94:6.2 This unique century of spiritual progress was characterized by great religious, moral, and philosophic teachers all over the civilized world. In China, the two outstanding teachers were Lao-tse and Confucius. (1033.6) 94:6.3 Lao-tse built directly upon the concepts of the Salem traditions when he declared Tao to be the One First Cause of all creation. Lao was a man of great spiritual vision. He taught that man’s eternal destiny was “everlasting union with Tao, Supreme God and Universal King.” His comprehension of ultimate causation was most discerning, for he wrote: “Unity arises out of the Absolute Tao, and from Unity there appears cosmic Duality, and from such Duality, Trinity springs forth into existence, and Trinity is the primal source of all reality.” “All reality is ever in balance between the potentials and the actuals of the cosmos, and these are eternally harmonized by the spirit of divinity.”* (1033.7) 94:6.4 Lao-tse also made one of the earliest presentations of the doctrine of returning good for evil: “Goodness begets goodness, but to the one who is truly good, evil also begets goodness.” (1033.8) 94:6.5 He taught the return of the creature to the Creator and pictured life as the emergence of a personality from the cosmic potentials, while death was like the returning home of this creature personality. His concept of true faith was unusual, and he too likened it to the “attitude of a little child.” (1034.1) 94:6.6 His understanding of the eternal purpose of God was clear, for he said: “The Absolute Deity does not strive but is always victorious; he does not coerce mankind but always stands ready to respond to their true desires; the will of God is eternal in patience and eternal in the inevitability of its expression.” And of the true religionist he said, in expressing the truth that it is more blessed to give than to receive: “The good man seeks not to retain truth for himself but rather attempts to bestow these riches upon his fellows, for that is the realization of truth. The will of the Absolute God always benefits, never destroys; the purpose of the true believer is always to act but never to coerce.” (1034.2) 94:6.7 Lao’s teaching of nonresistance and the distinction which he made between action and coercion became later perverted into the beliefs of “seeing, doing, and thinking nothing.” But Lao never taught such error, albeit his presentation of nonresistance has been a factor in the further development of the pacific predilections of the Chinese peoples. (1034.3) 94:6.8 But the popular Taoism of twentieth-century Urantia has very little in common with the lofty sentiments and the cosmic concepts of the old philosopher who taught the truth as he perceived it, which was: That faith in the Absolute God is the source of that divine energy which will remake the world, and by which man ascends to spiritual union with Tao, the Eternal Deity and Creator Absolute of the universes. (1034.4) 94:6.9 Confucius (Kung Fu-tze) was a younger contemporary of Lao in sixth-century China. Confucius based his doctrines upon the better moral traditions of the long history of the yellow race, and he was also somewhat influenced by the lingering traditions of the Salem missionaries. His chief work consisted in the compilation of the wise sayings of ancient philosophers. He was a rejected teacher during his lifetime, but his writings and teachings have ever since exerted a great influence in China and Japan. Confucius set a new pace for the shamans in that he put morality in the place of magic. But he built too well; he made a new fetish out of order and established a respect for ancestral conduct that is still venerated by the Chinese at the time of this writing. (1034.5) 94:6.10 The Confucian preachment of morality was predicated on the theory that the earthly way is the distorted shadow of the heavenly way; that the true pattern of temporal civilization is the mirror reflection of the eternal order of heaven. The potential God concept in Confucianism was almost completely subordinated to the emphasis placed upon the Way of Heaven, the pattern of the cosmos. (1034.6) 94:6.11 The teachings of Lao have been lost to all but a few in the Orient, but the writings of Confucius have ever since constituted the basis of the moral fabric of the culture of almost a third of Urantians. These Confucian precepts, while perpetuating the best of the past, were somewhat inimical to the very Chinese spirit of investigation that had produced those achievements which were so venerated. The influence of these doctrines was unsuccessfully combated both by the imperial efforts of Ch’in Shih Huang Ti and by the teachings of Mo Ti, who proclaimed a brotherhood founded not on ethical duty but on the love of God. He sought to rekindle the ancient quest for new truth, but his teachings failed before the vigorous opposition of the disciples of Confucius. (1034.7) 94:6.12 Like many other spiritual and moral teachers, both Confucius and Lao-tse were eventually deified by their followers in those spiritually dark ages of China which intervened between the decline and perversion of the Taoist faith and the coming of the Buddhist missionaries from India. During these spiritually decadent centuries the religion of the yellow race degenerated into a pitiful theology wherein swarmed devils, dragons, and evil spirits, all betokening the returning fears of the unenlightened mortal mind. And China, once at the head of human society because of an advanced religion, then fell behind because of temporary failure to progress in the true path of the development of that God-consciousness which is indispensable to the true progress, not only of the individual mortal, but also of the intricate and complex civilizations which characterize the advance of culture and society on an evolutionary planet of time and space. 7. Gautama Siddhartha (1035.1) 94:7.1 Contemporary with Lao-tse and Confucius in China, another great teacher of truth arose in India. Gautama Siddhartha was born in the sixth century before Christ in the north Indian province of Nepal. His followers later made it appear that he was the son of a fabulously wealthy ruler, but, in truth, he was the heir apparent to the throne of a petty chieftain who ruled by sufferance over a small and secluded mountain valley in the southern Himalayas. (1035.2) 94:7.2 Gautama formulated those theories which grew into the philosophy of Buddhism after six years of the futile practice of Yoga. Siddhartha made a determined but unavailing fight against the growing caste system. There was a lofty sincerity and a unique unselfishness about this young prophet prince that greatly appealed to the men of those days. He detracted from the practice of seeking individual salvation through physical affliction and personal pain. And he exhorted his followers to carry his gospel to all the world. (1035.3) 94:7.3 Amid the confusion and extreme cult practices of India, the saner and more moderate teachings of Gautama came as a refreshing relief. He denounced gods, priests, and their sacrifices, but he too failed to perceive the personality of the One Universal. Not believing in the existence of individual human souls, Gautama, of course, made a valiant fight against the time-honored belief in transmigration of the soul. He made a noble effort to deliver men from fear, to make them feel at ease and at home in the great universe, but he failed to show them the pathway to that real and supernal home of ascending mortals — Paradise — and to the expanding service of eternal existence. (1035.4) 94:7.4 Gautama was a real prophet, and had he heeded the instruction of the hermit Godad, he might have aroused all India by the inspiration of the revival of the Salem gospel of salvation by faith. Godad was descended through a family that had never lost the traditions of the Melchizedek missionaries. (1035.5) 94:7.5 At Benares Gautama founded his school, and it was during its second year that a pupil, Bautan, imparted to his teacher the traditions of the Salem missionaries about the Melchizedek covenant with Abraham; and while Siddhartha did not have a very clear concept of the Universal Father, he took an advanced stand on salvation through faith — simple belief. He so declared himself before his followers and began sending his students out in groups of sixty to proclaim to the people of India “the glad tidings of free salvation; that all men, high and low, can attain bliss by faith in righteousness and justice.” (1035.6) 94:7.6 Gautama’s wife believed her husband’s gospel and was the founder of an order of nuns. His son became his successor and greatly extended the cult; he grasped the new idea of salvation through faith but in his later years wavered regarding the Salem gospel of divine favor through faith alone, and in his old age his dying words were, “Work out your own salvation.” (1036.1) 94:7.7 When proclaimed at its best, Gautama’s gospel of universal salvation, free from sacrifice, torture, ritual, and priests, was a revolutionary and amazing doctrine for its time. And it came surprisingly near to being a revival of the Salem gospel. It brought succor to millions of despairing souls, and notwithstanding its grotesque perversion during later centuries, it still persists as the hope of millions of human beings. (1036.2) 94:7.8 Siddhartha taught far more truth than has survived in the modern cults bearing his name. Modern Buddhism is no more the teachings of Gautama Siddhartha than is Christianity the teachings of Jesus of Nazareth. 8. The Buddhist Faith (1036.3) 94:8.1 To become a Buddhist, one merely made public profession of the faith by reciting the Refuge: “I take my refuge in the Buddha; I take my refuge in the Doctrine; I take my refuge in the Brotherhood.” (1036.4) 94:8.2 Buddhism took origin in a historic person, not in a myth. Gautama’s followers called him Sasta, meaning master or teacher. While he made no superhuman claims for either himself or his teachings, his disciples early began to call him the enlightened one, the Buddha; later on, Sakyamuni Buddha. (1036.5) 94:8.3 The original gospel of Gautama was based on the four noble truths: (1036.6) 94:8.4 1. The noble truths of suffering. (1036.7) 94:8.5 2. The origins of suffering. (1036.8) 94:8.6 3. The destruction of suffering. (1036.9) 94:8.7 4. The way to the destruction of suffering. (1036.10) 94:8.8 Closely linked to the doctrine of suffering and the escape therefrom was the philosophy of the Eightfold Path: right views, aspirations, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness, and contemplation. It was not Gautama’s intention to attempt to destroy all effort, desire, and affection in the escape from suffering; rather was his teaching designed to picture to mortal man the futility of pinning all hope and aspirations entirely on temporal goals and material objectives. It was not so much that love of one’s fellows should be shunned as that the true believer should also look beyond the associations of this material world to the realities of the eternal future. (1036.11) 94:8.9 The moral commandments of Gautama’s preachment were five in number: (1036.12) 94:8.10 1. You shall not kill. (1036.13) 94:8.11 2. You shall not steal. (1036.14) 94:8.12 3. You shall not be unchaste. (1036.15) 94:8.13 4. You shall not lie. (1036.16) 94:8.14 5. You shall not drink intoxicating liquors. (1036.17) 94:8.15 There were several additional or secondary commandments, whose observance was optional with believers. (1036.18) 94:8.16 Siddhartha hardly believed in the immortality of the human personality; his philosophy only provided for a sort of functional continuity. He never clearly defined what he meant to include in the doctrine of Nirvana. The fact that it could theoretically be experienced during mortal existence would indicate that it was not viewed as a state of complete annihilation. It implied a condition of supreme enlightenment and supernal bliss wherein all fetters binding man to the material world had been broken; there was freedom from the desires of mortal life and deliverance from all danger of ever again experiencing incarnation. (1037.1) 94:8.17 According to the original teachings of Gautama, salvation is achieved by human effort, apart from divine help; there is no place for saving faith or prayers to superhuman powers. Gautama, in his attempt to minimize the superstitions of India, endeavored to turn men away from the blatant claims of magical salvation. And in making this effort, he left the door wide open for his successors to misinterpret his teaching and to proclaim that all human striving for attainment is distasteful and painful. His followers overlooked the fact that the highest happiness is linked with the intelligent and enthusiastic pursuit of worthy goals, and that such achievements constitute true progress in cosmic self-realization. (1037.2) 94:8.18 The great truth of Siddhartha’s teaching was his proclamation of a universe of absolute justice. He taught the best godless philosophy ever invented by mortal man; it was the ideal humanism and most effectively removed all grounds for superstition, magical rituals, and fear of ghosts or demons. (1037.3) 94:8.19 The great weakness in the original gospel of Buddhism was that it did not produce a religion of unselfish social service. The Buddhistic brotherhood was, for a long time, not a fraternity of believers but rather a community of student teachers. Gautama forbade their receiving money and thereby sought to prevent the growth of hierarchal tendencies. Gautama himself was highly social; indeed, his life was much greater than his preachment. 9. The Spread of Buddhism (1037.4) 94:9.1 Buddhism prospered because it offered salvation through belief in the Buddha, the enlightened one. It was more representative of the Melchizedek truths than any other religious system to be found throughout eastern Asia. But Buddhism did not become widespread as a religion until it was espoused in self-protection by the low-caste monarch Asoka, who, next to Ikhnaton in Egypt, was one of the most remarkable civil rulers between Melchizedek and Michael. Asoka built a great Indian empire through the propaganda of his Buddhist missionaries. During a period of twenty-five years he trained and sent forth more than seventeen thousand missionaries to the farthest frontiers of all the known world. In one generation he made Buddhism the dominant religion of one half the world. It soon became established in Tibet, Kashmir, Ceylon, Burma, Java, Siam, Korea, China, and Japan. And generally speaking, it was a religion vastly superior to those which it supplanted or upstepped. (1037.5) 94:9.2 The spread of Buddhism from its homeland in India to all of Asia is one of the thrilling stories of the spiritual devotion and missionary persistence of sincere religionists. The teachers of Gautama’s gospel not only braved the perils of the overland caravan routes but faced the dangers of the China Seas as they pursued their mission over the Asiatic continent, bringing to all peoples the message of their faith. But this Buddhism was no longer the simple doctrine of Gautama; it was the miraculized gospel which made him a god. And the farther Buddhism spread from its highland home in India, the more unlike the teachings of Gautama it became, and the more like the religions it supplanted, it grew to be. (1038.1) 94:9.3 Buddhism, later on, was much affected by Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan, and Christianity in Tibet. After a thousand years, in India Buddhism simply withered and expired. It became Brahmanized and later abjectly surrendered to Islam, while throughout much of the rest of the Orient it degenerated into a ritual which Gautama Siddhartha would never have recognized. (1038.2) 94:9.4 In the south the fundamentalist stereotype of the teachings of Siddhartha persisted in Ceylon, Burma, and the Indo-China peninsula. This is the Hinayana division of Buddhism which clings to the early or asocial doctrine. (1038.3) 94:9.5 But even before the collapse in India, the Chinese and north Indian groups of Gautama’s followers had begun the development of the Mahayana teaching of the “Great Road” to salvation in contrast with the purists of the south who held to the Hinayana, or “Lesser Road.” And these Mahayanists cast loose from the social limitations inherent in the Buddhist doctrine, and ever since has this northern division of Buddhism continued to evolve in China and Japan. (1038.4) 94:9.6 Buddhism is a living, growing religion today because it succeeds in conserving many of the highest moral values of its adherents. It promotes calmness and self-control, augments serenity and happiness, and does much to prevent sorrow and mourning. Those who believe this philosophy live better lives than many who do not. 10. Religion in Tibet (1038.5) 94:10.1 In Tibet may be found the strangest association of the Melchizedek teachings combined with Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Christianity. When the Buddhist missionaries entered Tibet, they encountered a state of primitive savagery very similar to that which the early Christian missionaries found among the northern tribes of Europe. (1038.6) 94:10.2 These simple-minded Tibetans would not wholly give up their ancient magic and charms. Examination of the religious ceremonials of present-day Tibetan rituals reveals an overgrown brotherhood of priests with shaven heads who practice an elaborate ritual embracing bells, chants, incense, processionals, rosaries, images, charms, pictures, holy water, gorgeous vestments, and elaborate choirs. They have rigid dogmas and crystallized creeds, mystic rites and special fasts. Their hierarchy embraces monks, nuns, abbots, and the Grand Lama. They pray to angels, saints, a Holy Mother, and the gods. They practice confessions and believe in purgatory. Their monasteries are extensive and their cathedrals magnificent. They keep up an endless repetition of sacred rituals and believe that such ceremonials bestow salvation. Prayers are fastened to a wheel, and with its turning they believe the petitions become efficacious. Among no other people of modern times can be found the observance of so much from so many religions; and it is inevitable that such a cumulative liturgy would become inordinately cumbersome and intolerably burdensome. (1038.7) 94:10.3 The Tibetans have something of all the leading world religions except the simple teachings of the Jesusonian gospel: sonship with God, brotherhood with man, and ever-ascending citizenship in the eternal universe. 11. Buddhist Philosophy (1038.8) 94:11.1 Buddhism entered China in the first millennium after Christ, and it fitted well into the religious customs of the yellow race. In ancestor worship they had long prayed to the dead; now they could also pray for them. Buddhism soon amalgamated with the lingering ritualistic practices of disintegrating Taoism. This new synthetic religion with its temples of worship and definite religious ceremonial soon became the generally accepted cult of the peoples of China, Korea, and Japan. (1039.1) 94:11.2 While in some respects it is unfortunate that Buddhism was not carried to the world until after Gautama’s followers had so perverted the traditions and teachings of the cult as to make of him a divine being, nonetheless this myth of his human life, embellished as it was with a multitude of miracles, proved very appealing to the auditors of the northern or Mahayana gospel of Buddhism. (1039.2) 94:11.3 Some of his later followers taught that Sakyamuni Buddha’s spirit returned periodically to earth as a living Buddha, thus opening the way for an indefinite perpetuation of Buddha images, temples, rituals, and impostor “living Buddhas.” Thus did the religion of the great Indian protestant eventually find itself shackled with those very ceremonial practices and ritualistic incantations against which he had so fearlessly fought, and which he had so valiantly denounced. (1039.3) 94:11.4 The great advance made in Buddhist philosophy consisted in its comprehension of the relativity of all truth. Through the mechanism of this hypothesis Buddhists have been able to reconcile and correlate the divergencies within their own religious scriptures as well as the differences between their own and many others. It was taught that the small truth was for little minds, the large truth for great minds. (1039.4) 94:11.5 This philosophy also held that the Buddha (divine) nature resided in all men; that man, through his own endeavors, could attain to the realization of this inner divinity. And this teaching is one of the clearest presentations of the truth of the indwelling Adjusters ever to be made by a Urantian religion. (1039.5) 94:11.6 But a great limitation in the original gospel of Siddhartha, as it was interpreted by his followers, was that it attempted the complete liberation of the human self from all the limitations of the mortal nature by the technique of isolating the self from objective reality. True cosmic self-realization results from identification with cosmic reality and with the finite cosmos of energy, mind, and spirit, bounded by space and conditioned by time. (1039.6) 94:11.7 But though the ceremonies and outward observances of Buddhism became grossly contaminated with those of the lands to which it traveled, this degeneration was not altogether the case in the philosophical life of the great thinkers who, from time to time, embraced this system of thought and belief. Through more than two thousand years, many of the best minds of Asia have concentrated upon the problem of ascertaining absolute truth and the truth of the Absolute. (1039.7) 94:11.8 The evolution of a high concept of the Absolute was achieved through many channels of thought and by devious paths of reasoning. The upward ascent of this doctrine of infinity was not so clearly defined as was the evolution of the God concept in Hebrew theology. Nevertheless, there were certain broad levels which the minds of the Buddhists reached, tarried upon, and passed through on their way to the envisioning of the Primal Source of universes: (1039.8) 94:11.9 1. The Gautama legend. At the base of the concept was the historic fact of the life and teachings of Siddhartha, the prophet prince of India. This legend grew in myth as it traveled through the centuries and across the broad lands of Asia until it surpassed the status of the idea of Gautama as the enlightened one and began to take on additional attributes. (1040.1) 94:11.10 2. The many Buddhas. It was reasoned that, if Gautama had come to the peoples of India, then, in the remote past and in the remote future, the races of mankind must have been, and undoubtedly would be, blessed with other teachers of truth. This gave rise to the teaching that there were many Buddhas, an unlimited and infinite number, even that anyone could aspire to become one — to attain the divinity of a Buddha. (1040.2) 94:11.11 3. The Absolute Buddha. By the time the number of Buddhas was approaching infinity, it became necessary for the minds of those days to reunify this unwieldy concept. Accordingly it began to be taught that all Buddhas were but the manifestation of some higher essence, some Eternal One of infinite and unqualified existence, some Absolute Source of all reality. From here on, the Deity concept of Buddhism, in its highest form, becomes divorced from the human person of Gautama Siddhartha and casts off from the anthropomorphic limitations which have held it in leash. This final conception of the Buddha Eternal can well be identified as the Absolute, sometimes even as the infinite I AM. (1040.3) 94:11.12 While this idea of Absolute Deity never found great popular favor with the peoples of Asia, it did enable the intellectuals of these lands to unify their philosophy and to harmonize their cosmology. The concept of the Buddha Absolute is at times quasi-personal, at times wholly impersonal — even an infinite creative force. Such concepts, though helpful to philosophy, are not vital to religious development. Even an anthropomorphic Yahweh is of greater religious value than an infinitely remote Absolute of Buddhism or Brahmanism. (1040.4) 94:11.13 At times the Absolute was even thought of as contained within the infinite I AM. But these speculations were chill comfort to the hungry multitudes who craved to hear words of promise, to hear the simple gospel of Salem, that faith in God would assure divine favor and eternal survival. 12. The God Concept of Buddhism (1040.5) 94:12.1 The great weakness in the cosmology of Buddhism was twofold: its contamination with many of the superstitions of India and China and its sublimation of Gautama, first as the enlightened one, and then as the Eternal Buddha. Just as Christianity has suffered from the absorption of much erroneous human philosophy, so does Buddhism bear its human birthmark. But the teachings of Gautama have continued to evolve during the past two and one-half millenniums. The concept of Buddha, to an enlightened Buddhist, is no more the human personality of Gautama than the concept of Jehovah is identical with the spirit demon of Horeb to an enlightened Christian. Paucity of terminology, together with the sentimental retention of olden nomenclature, is often provocative of the failure to understand the true significance of the evolution of religious concepts. (1040.6) 94:12.2 Gradually the concept of God, as contrasted with the Absolute, began to appear in Buddhism. Its sources are back in the early days of this differentiation of the followers of the Lesser Road and the Greater Road. It was among the latter division of Buddhism that the dual conception of God and the Absolute finally matured. Step by step, century by century, the God concept has evolved until, with the teachings of Ryonin, Honen Shonin, and Shinran in Japan, this concept finally came to fruit in the belief in Amida Buddha. (1041.1) 94:12.3 Among these believers it is taught that the soul, upon experiencing death, may elect to enjoy a sojourn in Paradise prior to entering Nirvana, the ultimate of existence. It is proclaimed that this new salvation is attained by faith in the divine mercies and loving care of Amida, God of the Paradise in the west. In their philosophy, the Amidists hold to an Infinite Reality which is beyond all finite mortal comprehension; in their religion, they cling to faith in the all-merciful Amida, who so loves the world that he will not suffer one mortal who calls on his name in true faith and with a pure heart to fail in the attainment of the supernal happiness of Paradise. (1041.2) 94:12.4 The great strength of Buddhism is that its adherents are free to choose truth from all religions; such freedom of choice has seldom characterized a Urantian faith. In this respect the Shin sect of Japan has become one of the most progressive religious groups in the world; it has revived the ancient missionary spirit of Gautama’s followers and has begun to send teachers to other peoples. This willingness to appropriate truth from any and all sources is indeed a commendable tendency to appear among religious believers during the first half of the twentieth century after Christ. (1041.3) 94:12.5 Buddhism itself is undergoing a twentieth-century renaissance. Through contact with Christianity the social aspects of Buddhism have been greatly enhanced. The desire to learn has been rekindled in the hearts of the monk priests of the brotherhood, and the spread of education throughout this faith will be certainly provocative of new advances in religious evolution. (1041.4) 94:12.6 At the time of this writing, much of Asia rests its hope in Buddhism. Will this noble faith, that has so valiantly carried on through the dark ages of the past, once again receive the truth of expanded cosmic realities even as the disciples of the great teacher in India once listened to his proclamation of new truth? Will this ancient faith respond once more to the invigorating stimulus of the presentation of new concepts of God and the Absolute for which it has so long searched? (1041.5) 94:12.7 All Urantia is waiting for the proclamation of the ennobling message of Michael, unencumbered by the accumulated doctrines and dogmas of nineteen centuries of contact with the religions of evolutionary origin. The hour is striking for presenting to Buddhism, to Christianity, to Hinduism, even to the peoples of all faiths, not the gospel about Jesus, but the living, spiritual reality of the gospel of Jesus. (1041.6) 94:12.8 [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]

The Melchizedek Teachings in the Occident (1077.1) 98:0.1 THE Melchizedek teachings entered Europe along many routes, but chiefly they came by way of Egypt and were embodied in Occidental philosophy after being thoroughly Hellenized and later Christianized. The ideals of the Western world were basically Socratic, and its later religious philosophy became that of Jesus as it was modified and compromised through contact with evolving Occidental philosophy and religion, all of which culminated in the Christian church. (1077.2) 98:0.2 For a long time in Europe the Salem missionaries carried on their activities, becoming gradually absorbed into many of the cults and ritual groups which periodically arose. Among those who maintained the Salem teachings in the purest form must be mentioned the Cynics. These preachers of faith and trust in God were still functioning in Roman Europe in the first century after Christ, being later incorporated into the newly forming Christian religion. (1077.3) 98:0.3 Much of the Salem doctrine was spread in Europe by the Jewish mercenary soldiers who fought in so many of the Occidental military struggles. In ancient times the Jews were famed as much for military valor as for theologic peculiarities. (1077.4) 98:0.4 The basic doctrines of Greek philosophy, Jewish theology, and Christian ethics were fundamentally repercussions of the earlier Melchizedek teachings. 1. The Salem Religion Among the Greeks (1077.5) 98:1.1 The Salem missionaries might have built up a great religious structure among the Greeks had it not been for their strict interpretation of their oath of ordination, a pledge imposed by Machiventa which forbade the organization of exclusive congregations for worship, and which exacted the promise of each teacher never to function as a priest, never to receive fees for religious service, only food, clothing, and shelter. When the Melchizedek teachers penetrated to pre-Hellenic Greece, they found a people who still fostered the traditions of Adamson and the days of the Andites, but these teachings had become greatly adulterated with the notions and beliefs of the hordes of inferior slaves that had been brought to the Greek shores in increasing numbers. This adulteration produced a reversion to a crude animism with bloody rites, the lower classes even making ceremonial out of the execution of condemned criminals. (1077.6) 98:1.2 The early influence of the Salem teachers was nearly destroyed by the so-called Aryan invasion from southern Europe and the East. These Hellenic invaders brought along with them anthropomorphic God concepts similar to those which their Aryan fellows had carried to India. This importation inaugurated the evolution of the Greek family of gods and goddesses. This new religion was partly based on the cults of the incoming Hellenic barbarians, but it also shared in the myths of the older inhabitants of Greece. (1078.1) 98:1.3 The Hellenic Greeks found the Mediterranean world largely dominated by the mother cult, and they imposed upon these peoples their man-god, Dyaus-Zeus, who had already become, like Yahweh among the henotheistic Semites, head of the whole Greek pantheon of subordinate gods. And the Greeks would have eventually achieved a true monotheism in the concept of Zeus except for their retention of the overcontrol of Fate. A God of final value must, himself, be the arbiter of fate and the creator of destiny. (1078.2) 98:1.4 As a consequence of these factors in religious evolution, there presently developed the popular belief in the happy-go-lucky gods of Mount Olympus, gods more human than divine, and gods which the intelligent Greeks never did regard very seriously. They neither greatly loved nor greatly feared these divinities of their own creation. They had a patriotic and racial feeling for Zeus and his family of half men and half gods, but they hardly reverenced or worshiped them. (1078.3) 98:1.5 The Hellenes became so impregnated with the antipriestcraft doctrines of the earlier Salem teachers that no priesthood of any importance ever arose in Greece. Even the making of images to the gods became more of a work in art than a matter of worship. (1078.4) 98:1.6 The Olympian gods illustrate man’s typical anthropomorphism. But the Greek mythology was more aesthetic than ethic. The Greek religion was helpful in that it portrayed a universe governed by a deity group. But Greek morals, ethics, and philosophy presently advanced far beyond the god concept, and this imbalance between intellectual and spiritual growth was as hazardous to Greece as it had proved to be in India. 2. Greek Philosophic Thought (1078.5) 98:2.1 A lightly regarded and superficial religion cannot endure, especially when it has no priesthood to foster its forms and to fill the hearts of the devotees with fear and awe. The Olympian religion did not promise salvation, nor did it quench the spiritual thirst of its believers; therefore was it doomed to perish. Within a millennium of its inception it had nearly vanished, and the Greeks were without a national religion, the gods of Olympus having lost their hold upon the better minds. (1078.6) 98:2.2 This was the situation when, during the sixth century before Christ, the Orient and the Levant experienced a revival of spiritual consciousness and a new awakening to the recognition of monotheism. But the West did not share in this new development; neither Europe nor northern Africa extensively participated in this religious renaissance. The Greeks, however, did engage in a magnificent intellectual advancement. They had begun to master fear and no longer sought religion as an antidote therefor, but they did not perceive that true religion is the cure for soul hunger, spiritual disquiet, and moral despair. They sought for the solace of the soul in deep thinking — philosophy and metaphysics. They turned from the contemplation of self-preservation — salvation — to self-realization and self-understanding. (1078.7) 98:2.3 By rigorous thought the Greeks attempted to attain that consciousness of security which would serve as a substitute for the belief in survival, but they utterly failed. Only the more intelligent among the higher classes of the Hellenic peoples could grasp this new teaching; the rank and file of the progeny of the slaves of former generations had no capacity for the reception of this new substitute for religion. (1079.1) 98:2.4 The philosophers disdained all forms of worship, notwithstanding that they practically all held loosely to the background of a belief in the Salem doctrine of “the Intelligence of the universe,” “the idea of God,” and “the Great Source.” In so far as the Greek philosophers gave recognition to the divine and the superfinite, they were frankly monotheistic; they gave scant recognition to the whole galaxy of Olympian gods and goddesses. (1079.2) 98:2.5 The Greek poets of the fifth and sixth centuries, notably Pindar, attempted the reformation of Greek religion. They elevated its ideals, but they were more artists than religionists. They failed to develop a technique for fostering and conserving supreme values. (1079.3) 98:2.6 Xenophanes taught one God, but his deity concept was too pantheistic to be a personal Father to mortal man. Anaxagoras was a mechanist except that he did recognize a First Cause, an Initial Mind. Socrates and his successors, Plato and Aristotle, taught that virtue is knowledge; goodness, health of the soul; that it is better to suffer injustice than to be guilty of it, that it is wrong to return evil for evil, and that the gods are wise and good. Their cardinal virtues were: wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice. (1079.4) 98:2.7 The evolution of religious philosophy among the Hellenic and Hebrew peoples affords a contrastive illustration of the function of the church as an institution in the shaping of cultural progress. In Palestine, human thought was so priest-controlled and scripture-directed that philosophy and aesthetics were entirely submerged in religion and morality. In Greece, the almost complete absence of priests and “sacred scriptures” left the human mind free and unfettered, resulting in a startling development in depth of thought. But religion as a personal experience failed to keep pace with the intellectual probings into the nature and reality of the cosmos. (1079.5) 98:2.8 In Greece, believing was subordinated to thinking; in Palestine, thinking was held subject to believing. Much of the strength of Christianity is due to its having borrowed heavily from both Hebrew morality and Greek thought. (1079.6) 98:2.9 In Palestine, religious dogma became so crystallized as to jeopardize further growth; in Greece, human thought became so abstract that the concept of God resolved itself into a misty vapor of pantheistic speculation not at all unlike the impersonal Infinity of the Brahman philosophers. (1079.7) 98:2.10 But the average men of these times could not grasp, nor were they much interested in, the Greek philosophy of self-realization and an abstract Deity; they rather craved promises of salvation, coupled with a personal God who could hear their prayers. They exiled the philosophers, persecuted the remnants of the Salem cult, both doctrines having become much blended, and made ready for that terrible orgiastic plunge into the follies of the mystery cults which were then overspreading the Mediterranean lands. The Eleusinian mysteries grew up within the Olympian pantheon, a Greek version of the worship of fertility; Dionysus nature worship flourished; the best of the cults was the Orphic brotherhood, whose moral preachments and promises of salvation made a great appeal to many. (1080.1) 98:2.11 All Greece became involved in these new methods of attaining salvation, these emotional and fiery ceremonials. No nation ever attained such heights of artistic philosophy in so short a time; none ever created such an advanced system of ethics practically without Deity and entirely devoid of the promise of human salvation; no nation ever plunged so quickly, deeply, and violently into such depths of intellectual stagnation, moral depravity, and spiritual poverty as these same Greek peoples when they flung themselves into the mad whirl of the mystery cults. (1080.2) 98:2.12 Religions have long endured without philosophical support, but few philosophies, as such, have long persisted without some identification with religion. Philosophy is to religion as conception is to action. But the ideal human estate is that in which philosophy, religion, and science are welded into a meaningful unity by the conjoined action of wisdom, faith, and experience. 3. The Melchizedek Teachings in Rome (1080.3) 98:3.1 Having grown out of the earlier religious forms of worship of the family gods into the tribal reverence for Mars, the god of war, it was natural that the later religion of the Latins was more of a political observance than were the intellectual systems of the Greeks and Brahmans or the more spiritual religions of several other peoples. (1080.4) 98:3.2 In the great monotheistic renaissance of Melchizedek’s gospel during the sixth century before Christ, too few of the Salem missionaries penetrated Italy, and those who did were unable to overcome the influence of the rapidly spreading Etruscan priesthood with its new galaxy of gods and temples, all of which became organized into the Roman state religion. This religion of the Latin tribes was not trivial and venal like that of the Greeks, neither was it austere and tyrannical like that of the Hebrews; it consisted for the most part in the observance of mere forms, vows, and taboos. (1080.5) 98:3.3 Roman religion was greatly influenced by extensive cultural importations from Greece. Eventually most of the Olympian gods were transplanted and incorporated into the Latin pantheon. The Greeks long worshiped the fire of the family hearth — Hestia was the virgin goddess of the hearth; Vesta was the Roman goddess of the home. Zeus became Jupiter; Aphrodite, Venus; and so on down through the many Olympian deities. (1080.6) 98:3.4 The religious initiation of Roman youths was the occasion of their solemn consecration to the service of the state. Oaths and admissions to citizenship were in reality religious ceremonies. The Latin peoples maintained temples, altars, and shrines and, in a crisis, would consult the oracles. They preserved the bones of heroes and later on those of the Christian saints. (1080.7) 98:3.5 This formal and unemotional form of pseudoreligious patriotism was doomed to collapse, even as the highly intellectual and artistic worship of the Greeks had gone down before the fervid and deeply emotional worship of the mystery cults. The greatest of these devastating cults was the mystery religion of the Mother of God sect, which had its headquarters, in those days, on the exact site of the present church of St. Peter’s in Rome. (1080.8) 98:3.6 The emerging Roman state conquered politically but was in turn conquered by the cults, rituals, mysteries, and god concepts of Egypt, Greece, and the Levant. These imported cults continued to flourish throughout the Roman state up to the time of Augustus, who, purely for political and civic reasons, made a heroic and somewhat successful effort to destroy the mysteries and revive the older political religion. (1081.1) 98:3.7 One of the priests of the state religion told Augustus of the earlier attempts of the Salem teachers to spread the doctrine of one God, a final Deity presiding over all supernatural beings; and this idea took such a firm hold on the emperor that he built many temples, stocked them well with beautiful images, reorganized the state priesthood, re-established the state religion, appointed himself acting high priest of all, and as emperor did not hesitate to proclaim himself the supreme god. (1081.2) 98:3.8 This new religion of Augustus worship flourished and was observed throughout the empire during his lifetime except in Palestine, the home of the Jews. And this era of the human gods continued until the official Roman cult had a roster of more than twoscore self-elevated human deities, all claiming miraculous births and other superhuman attributes. (1081.3) 98:3.9 The last stand of the dwindling band of Salem believers was made by an earnest group of preachers, the Cynics, who exhorted the Romans to abandon their wild and senseless religious rituals and return to a form of worship embodying Melchizedek’s gospel as it had been modified and contaminated through contact with the philosophy of the Greeks. But the people at large rejected the Cynics; they preferred to plunge into the rituals of the mysteries, which not only offered hopes of personal salvation but also gratified the desire for diversion, excitement, and entertainment. 4. The Mystery Cults (1081.4) 98:4.1 The majority of people in the Greco-Roman world, having lost their primitive family and state religions and being unable or unwilling to grasp the meaning of Greek philosophy, turned their attention to the spectacular and emotional mystery cults from Egypt and the Levant. The common people craved promises of salvation — religious consolation for today and assurances of hope for immortality after death.* (1081.5) 98:4.2 The three mystery cults which became most popular were: (1081.6) 98:4.3 1. The Phrygian cult of Cybele and her son Attis. (1081.7) 98:4.4 2. The Egyptian cult of Osiris and his mother Isis. (1081.8) 98:4.5 3. The Iranian cult of the worship of Mithras as the savior and redeemer of sinful mankind. (1081.9) 98:4.6 The Phrygian and Egyptian mysteries taught that the divine son (respectively Attis and Osiris) had experienced death and had been resurrected by divine power, and further that all who were properly initiated into the mystery, and who reverently celebrated the anniversary of the god’s death and resurrection, would thereby become partakers of his divine nature and his immortality. (1081.10) 98:4.7 The Phrygian ceremonies were imposing but degrading; their bloody festivals indicate how degraded and primitive these Levantine mysteries became. The most holy day was Black Friday, the “day of blood,” commemorating the self-inflicted death of Attis. After three days of the celebration of the sacrifice and death of Attis the festival was turned to joy in honor of his resurrection. (1082.1) 98:4.8 The rituals of the worship of Isis and Osiris were more refined and impressive than were those of the Phrygian cult. This Egyptian ritual was built around the legend of the Nile god of old, a god who died and was resurrected, which concept was derived from the observation of the annually recurring stoppage of vegetation growth followed by the springtime restoration of all living plants. The frenzy of the observance of these mystery cults and the orgies of their ceremonials, which were supposed to lead up to the “enthusiasm” of the realization of divinity, were sometimes most revolting. 5. The Cult of Mithras (1082.2) 98:5.1 The Phrygian and Egyptian mysteries eventually gave way before the greatest of all the mystery cults, the worship of Mithras. The Mithraic cult made its appeal to a wide range of human nature and gradually supplanted both of its predecessors. Mithraism spread over the Roman Empire through the propagandizing of Roman legions recruited in the Levant, where this religion was the vogue, for they carried this belief wherever they went. And this new religious ritual was a great improvement over the earlier mystery cults. (1082.3) 98:5.2 The cult of Mithras arose in Iran and long persisted in its homeland despite the militant opposition of the followers of Zoroaster. But by the time Mithraism reached Rome, it had become greatly improved by the absorption of many of Zoroaster’s teachings. It was chiefly through the Mithraic cult that Zoroaster’s religion exerted an influence upon later appearing Christianity. (1082.4) 98:5.3 The Mithraic cult portrayed a militant god taking origin in a great rock, engaging in valiant exploits, and causing water to gush forth from a rock struck with his arrows. There was a flood from which one man escaped in a specially built boat and a last supper which Mithras celebrated with the sun-god before he ascended into the heavens. This sun-god, or Sol Invictus, was a degeneration of the Ahura-Mazda deity concept of Zoroastrianism. Mithras was conceived as the surviving champion of the sun-god in his struggle with the god of darkness. And in recognition of his slaying the mythical sacred bull, Mithras was made immortal, being exalted to the station of intercessor for the human race among the gods on high. (1082.5) 98:5.4 The adherents of this cult worshiped in caves and other secret places, chanting hymns, mumbling magic, eating the flesh of the sacrificial animals, and drinking the blood. Three times a day they worshiped, with special weekly ceremonials on the day of the sun-god and with the most elaborate observance of all on the annual festival of Mithras, December twenty-fifth. It was believed that the partaking of the sacrament ensured eternal life, the immediate passing, after death, to the bosom of Mithras, there to tarry in bliss until the judgment day. On the judgment day the Mithraic keys of heaven would unlock the gates of Paradise for the reception of the faithful; whereupon all the unbaptized of the living and the dead would be annihilated upon the return of Mithras to earth. It was taught that, when a man died, he went before Mithras for judgment, and that at the end of the world Mithras would summon all the dead from their graves to face the last judgment. The wicked would be destroyed by fire, and the righteous would reign with Mithras forever. (1082.6) 98:5.5 At first it was a religion only for men, and there were seven different orders into which believers could be successively initiated. Later on, the wives and daughters of believers were admitted to the temples of the Great Mother, which adjoined the Mithraic temples. The women’s cult was a mixture of Mithraic ritual and the ceremonies of the Phrygian cult of Cybele, the mother of Attis. 6. Mithraism and Christianity (1083.1) 98:6.1 Prior to the coming of the mystery cults and Christianity, personal religion hardly developed as an independent institution in the civilized lands of North Africa and Europe; it was more of a family, city-state, political, and imperial affair. The Hellenic Greeks never evolved a centralized worship system; the ritual was local; they had no priesthood and no “sacred book.” Much as the Romans, their religious institutions lacked a powerful driving agency for the preservation of higher moral and spiritual values. While it is true that the institutionalization of religion has usually detracted from its spiritual quality, it is also a fact that no religion has thus far succeeded in surviving without the aid of institutional organization of some degree, greater or lesser. (1083.2) 98:6.2 Occidental religion thus languished until the days of the Skeptics, Cynics, Epicureans, and Stoics, but most important of all, until the times of the great contest between Mithraism and Paul’s new religion of Christianity. (1083.3) 98:6.3 During the third century after Christ, Mithraic and Christian churches were very similar both in appearance and in the character of their ritual. A majority of such places of worship were underground, and both contained altars whose backgrounds variously depicted the sufferings of the savior who had brought salvation to a sin-cursed human race. (1083.4) 98:6.4 Always had it been the practice of Mithraic worshipers, on entering the temple, to dip their fingers in holy water. And since in some districts there were those who at one time belonged to both religions, they introduced this custom into the majority of the Christian churches in the vicinity of Rome. Both religions employed baptism and partook of the sacrament of bread and wine. The one great difference between Mithraism and Christianity, aside from the characters of Mithras and Jesus, was that the one encouraged militarism while the other was ultrapacific. Mithraism’s tolerance for other religions (except later Christianity) led to its final undoing. But the deciding factor in the struggle between the two was the admission of women into the full fellowship of the Christian faith. (1083.5) 98:6.5 In the end the nominal Christian faith dominated the Occident. Greek philosophy supplied the concepts of ethical value; Mithraism, the ritual of worship observance; and Christianity, as such, the technique for the conservation of moral and social values. 7. The Christian Religion (1083.6) 98:7.1 A Creator Son did not incarnate in the likeness of mortal flesh and bestow himself upon the humanity of Urantia to reconcile an angry God but rather to win all mankind to the recognition of the Father’s love and to the realization of their sonship with God. After all, even the great advocate of the atonement doctrine realized something of this truth, for he declared that “God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself.” (1084.1) 98:7.2 It is not the province of this paper to deal with the origin and dissemination of the Christian religion. Suffice it to say that it is built around the person of Jesus of Nazareth, the humanly incarnate Michael Son of Nebadon, known to Urantia as the Christ, the anointed one. Christianity was spread throughout the Levant and Occident by the followers of this Galilean, and their missionary zeal equaled that of their illustrious predecessors, the Sethites and Salemites, as well as that of their earnest Asiatic contemporaries, the Buddhist teachers. (1084.2) 98:7.3 The Christian religion, as a Urantian system of belief, arose through the compounding of the following teachings, influences, beliefs, cults, and personal individual attitudes: (1084.3) 98:7.4 1. The Melchizedek teachings, which are a basic factor in all the religions of Occident and Orient that have arisen in the last four thousand years. (1084.4) 98:7.5 2. The Hebraic system of morality, ethics, theology, and belief in both Providence and the supreme Yahweh. (1084.5) 98:7.6 3. The Zoroastrian conception of the struggle between cosmic good and evil, which had already left its imprint on both Judaism and Mithraism. Through prolonged contact attendant upon the struggles between Mithraism and Christianity, the doctrines of the Iranian prophet became a potent factor in determining the theologic and philosophic cast and structure of the dogmas, tenets, and cosmology of the Hellenized and Latinized versions of the teachings of Jesus. (1084.6) 98:7.7 4. The mystery cults, especially Mithraism but also the worship of the Great Mother in the Phrygian cult. Even the legends of the birth of Jesus on Urantia became tainted with the Roman version of the miraculous birth of the Iranian savior-hero, Mithras, whose advent on earth was supposed to have been witnessed by only a handful of gift-bearing shepherds who had been informed of this impending event by angels. (1084.7) 98:7.8 5. The historic fact of the human life of Joshua ben Joseph, the reality of Jesus of Nazareth as the glorified Christ, the Son of God. (1084.8) 98:7.9 6. The personal viewpoint of Paul of Tarsus. And it should be recorded that Mithraism was the dominant religion of Tarsus during his adolescence. Paul little dreamed that his well-intentioned letters to his converts would someday be regarded by still later Christians as the “word of God.” Such well-meaning teachers must not be held accountable for the use made of their writings by later-day successors. (1084.9) 98:7.10 7. The philosophic thought of the Hellenistic peoples, from Alexandria and Antioch through Greece to Syracuse and Rome. The philosophy of the Greeks was more in harmony with Paul’s version of Christianity than with any other current religious system and became an important factor in the success of Christianity in the Occident. Greek philosophy, coupled with Paul’s theology, still forms the basis of European ethics. (1084.10) 98:7.11 As the original teachings of Jesus penetrated the Occident, they became Occidentalized, and as they became Occidentalized, they began to lose their potentially universal appeal to all races and kinds of men. Christianity, today, has become a religion well adapted to the social, economic, and political mores of the white races. It has long since ceased to be the religion of Jesus, although it still valiantly portrays a beautiful religion about Jesus to such individuals as sincerely seek to follow in the way of its teaching. It has glorified Jesus as the Christ, the Messianic anointed one from God, but has largely forgotten the Master’s personal gospel: the Fatherhood of God and the universal brotherhood of all men. (1085.1) 98:7.12 And this is the long story of the teachings of Machiventa Melchizedek on Urantia. It is nearly four thousand years since this emergency Son of Nebadon bestowed himself on Urantia, and in that time the teachings of the “priest of El Elyon, the Most High God,” have penetrated to all races and peoples. And Machiventa was successful in achieving the purpose of his unusual bestowal; when Michael made ready to appear on Urantia, the God concept was existent in the hearts of men and women, the same God concept that still flames anew in the living spiritual experience of the manifold children of the Universal Father as they live their intriguing temporal lives on the whirling planets of space. (1085.2) 98:7.13 [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]

Andite Expansion in the Orient (878.1) 79:0.1 ASIA is the homeland of the human race. It was on a southern peninsula of this continent that Andon and Fonta were born; in the highlands of what is now Afghanistan, their descendant Badonan founded a primitive center of culture that persisted for over one-half million years. Here at this eastern focus of the human race the Sangik peoples differentiated from the Andonic stock, and Asia was their first home, their first hunting ground, their first battlefield. Southwestern Asia witnessed the successive civilizations of Dalamatians, Nodites, Adamites, and Andites, and from these regions the potentials of modern civilization spread to the world. 1. The Andites of Turkestan (878.2) 79:1.1 For over twenty-five thousand years, on down to nearly 2000 B.C., the heart of Eurasia was predominantly, though diminishingly, Andite. In the lowlands of Turkestan the Andites made the westward turning around the inland lakes into Europe, while from the highlands of this region they infiltrated eastward. Eastern Turkestan (Sinkiang) and, to a lesser extent, Tibet were the ancient gateways through which these peoples of Mesopotamia penetrated the mountains to the northern lands of the yellow men. The Andite infiltration of India proceeded from the Turkestan highlands into the Punjab and from the Iranian grazing lands through Baluchistan. These earlier migrations were in no sense conquests; they were, rather, the continual drifting of the Andite tribes into western India and China. (878.3) 79:1.2 For almost fifteen thousand years centers of mixed Andite culture persisted in the basin of the Tarim River in Sinkiang and to the south in the highland regions of Tibet, where the Andites and Andonites had extensively mingled. The Tarim valley was the easternmost outpost of the true Andite culture. Here they built their settlements and entered into trade relations with the progressive Chinese to the east and with the Andonites to the north. In those days the Tarim region was a fertile land; the rainfall was plentiful. To the east the Gobi was an open grassland where the herders were gradually turning to agriculture. This civilization perished when the rain winds shifted to the southeast, but in its day it rivaled Mesopotamia itself. (878.4) 79:1.3 By 8000 B.C. the slowly increasing aridity of the highland regions of central Asia began to drive the Andites to the river bottoms and the seashores. This increasing drought not only drove them to the valleys of the Nile, Euphrates, Indus, and Yellow rivers, but it produced a new development in Andite civilization. A new class of men, the traders, began to appear in large numbers. (879.1) 79:1.4 When climatic conditions made hunting unprofitable for the migrating Andites, they did not follow the evolutionary course of the older races by becoming herders. Commerce and urban life made their appearance. From Egypt through Mesopotamia and Turkestan to the rivers of China and India, the more highly civilized tribes began to assemble in cities devoted to manufacture and trade. Adonia became the central Asian commercial metropolis, being located near the present city of Ashkhabad. Commerce in stone, metal, wood, and pottery was accelerated on both land and water. (879.2) 79:1.5 But ever-increasing drought gradually brought about the great Andite exodus from the lands south and east of the Caspian Sea. The tide of migration began to veer from northward to southward, and the Babylonian cavalrymen began to push into Mesopotamia. (879.3) 79:1.6 Increasing aridity in central Asia further operated to reduce population and to render these people less warlike; and when the diminishing rainfall to the north forced the nomadic Andonites southward, there was a tremendous exodus of Andites from Turkestan. This is the terminal movement of the so-called Aryans into the Levant and India. It culminated that long dispersal of the mixed descendants of Adam during which every Asiatic and most of the island peoples of the Pacific were to some extent improved by these superior races. (879.4) 79:1.7 Thus, while they dispersed over the Eastern Hemisphere, the Andites were dispossessed of their homelands in Mesopotamia and Turkestan, for it was this extensive southward movement of Andonites that diluted the Andites in central Asia nearly to the vanishing point. (879.5) 79:1.8 But even in the twentieth century after Christ there are traces of Andite blood among the Turanian and Tibetan peoples, as is witnessed by the blond types occasionally found in these regions. The early Chinese annals record the presence of the red-haired nomads to the north of the peaceful settlements of the Yellow River, and there still remain paintings which faithfully record the presence of both the blond-Andite and the brunet-Mongolian types in the Tarim basin of long ago. (879.6) 79:1.9 The last great manifestation of the submerged military genius of the central Asiatic Andites was in A.D. 1200, when the Mongols under Genghis Khan began the conquest of the greater portion of the Asiatic continent. And like the Andites of old, these warriors proclaimed the existence of “one God in heaven.” The early breakup of their empire long delayed cultural intercourse between Occident and Orient and greatly handicapped the growth of the monotheistic concept in Asia. 2. The Andite Conquest of India (879.7) 79:2.1 India is the only locality where all the Urantia races were blended, the Andite invasion adding the last stock. In the highlands northwest of India the Sangik races came into existence, and without exception members of each penetrated the subcontinent of India in their early days, leaving behind them the most heterogeneous race mixture ever to exist on Urantia. Ancient India acted as a catch basin for the migrating races. The base of the peninsula was formerly somewhat narrower than now, much of the deltas of the Ganges and Indus being the work of the last fifty thousand years. (879.8) 79:2.2 The earliest race mixtures in India were a blending of the migrating red and yellow races with the aboriginal Andonites. This group was later weakened by absorbing the greater portion of the extinct eastern green peoples as well as large numbers of the orange race, was slightly improved through limited admixture with the blue man, but suffered exceedingly through assimilation of large numbers of the indigo race. But the so-called aborigines of India are hardly representative of these early people; they are rather the most inferior southern and eastern fringe, which was never fully absorbed by either the early Andites or their later appearing Aryan cousins. (880.1) 79:2.3 By 20,000 B.C. the population of western India had already become tinged with the Adamic blood, and never in the history of Urantia did any one people combine so many different races. But it was unfortunate that the secondary Sangik strains predominated, and it was a real calamity that both the blue and the red man were so largely missing from this racial melting pot of long ago; more of the primary Sangik strains would have contributed very much toward the enhancement of what might have been an even greater civilization. As it developed, the red man was destroying himself in the Americas, the blue man was disporting himself in Europe, and the early descendants of Adam (and most of the later ones) exhibited little desire to admix with the darker colored peoples, whether in India, Africa, or elsewhere. (880.2) 79:2.4 About 15,000 B.C. increasing population pressure throughout Turkestan and Iran occasioned the first really extensive Andite movement toward India. For over fifteen centuries these superior peoples poured in through the highlands of Baluchistan, spreading out over the valleys of the Indus and Ganges and slowly moving southward into the Deccan. This Andite pressure from the northwest drove many of the southern and eastern inferiors into Burma and southern China but not sufficiently to save the invaders from racial obliteration. (880.3) 79:2.5 The failure of India to achieve the hegemony of Eurasia was largely a matter of topography; population pressure from the north only crowded the majority of the people southward into the decreasing territory of the Deccan, surrounded on all sides by the sea. Had there been adjacent lands for emigration, then would the inferiors have been crowded out in all directions, and the superior stocks would have achieved a higher civilization. (880.4) 79:2.6 As it was, these earlier Andite conquerors made a desperate attempt to preserve their identity and stem the tide of racial engulfment by the establishment of rigid restrictions regarding intermarriage. Nonetheless, the Andites had become submerged by 10,000 B.C., but the whole mass of the people had been markedly improved by this absorption. (880.5) 79:2.7 Race mixture is always advantageous in that it favors versatility of culture and makes for a progressive civilization, but if the inferior elements of racial stocks predominate, such achievements will be short-lived. A polyglot culture can be preserved only if the superior stocks reproduce themselves in a safe margin over the inferior. Unrestrained multiplication of inferiors, with decreasing reproduction of superiors, is unfailingly suicidal of cultural civilization. (880.6) 79:2.8 Had the Andite conquerors been in numbers three times what they were, or had they driven out or destroyed the least desirable third of the mixed orange-green-indigo inhabitants, then would India have become one of the world’s leading centers of cultural civilization and undoubtedly would have attracted more of the later waves of Mesopotamians that flowed into Turkestan and thence northward to Europe. 3. Dravidian India (881.1) 79:3.1 The blending of the Andite conquerors of India with the native stock eventually resulted in that mixed people which has been called Dravidian. The earlier and purer Dravidians possessed a great capacity for cultural achievement, which was continuously weakened as their Andite inheritance became progressively attenuated. And this is what doomed the budding civilization of India almost twelve thousand years ago. But the infusion of even this small amount of the blood of Adam produced a marked acceleration in social development. This composite stock immediately produced the most versatile civilization then on earth. (881.2) 79:3.2 Not long after conquering India, the Dravidian Andites lost their racial and cultural contact with Mesopotamia, but the later opening up of the sea lanes and the caravan routes re-established these connections; and at no time within the last ten thousand years has India ever been entirely out of touch with Mesopotamia on the west and China to the east, although the mountain barriers greatly favored western intercourse. (881.3) 79:3.3 The superior culture and religious leanings of the peoples of India date from the early times of Dravidian domination and are due, in part, to the fact that so many of the Sethite priesthood entered India, both in the earlier Andite and in the later Aryan invasions. The thread of monotheism running through the religious history of India thus stems from the teachings of the Adamites in the second garden. (881.4) 79:3.4 As early as 16,000 B.C. a company of one hundred Sethite priests entered India and very nearly achieved the religious conquest of the western half of that polyglot people. But their religion did not persist. Within five thousand years their doctrines of the Paradise Trinity had degenerated into the triune symbol of the fire god. (881.5) 79:3.5 But for more than seven thousand years, down to the end of the Andite migrations, the religious status of the inhabitants of India was far above that of the world at large. During these times India bid fair to produce the leading cultural, religious, philosophic, and commercial civilization of the world. And but for the complete submergence of the Andites by the peoples of the south, this destiny would probably have been realized.* (881.6) 79:3.6 The Dravidian centers of culture were located in the river valleys, principally of the Indus and Ganges, and in the Deccan along the three great rivers flowing through the Eastern Ghats to the sea. The settlements along the seacoast of the Western Ghats owed their prominence to maritime relationships with Sumeria. (881.7) 79:3.7 The Dravidians were among the earliest peoples to build cities and to engage in an extensive export and import business, both by land and sea. By 7000 B.C. camel trains were making regular trips to distant Mesopotamia; Dravidian shipping was pushing coastwise across the Arabian Sea to the Sumerian cities of the Persian Gulf and was venturing on the waters of the Bay of Bengal as far as the East Indies. An alphabet, together with the art of writing, was imported from Sumeria by these seafarers and merchants. (881.8) 79:3.8 These commercial relationships greatly contributed to the further diversification of a cosmopolitan culture, resulting in the early appearance of many of the refinements and even luxuries of urban life. When the later appearing Aryans entered India, they did not recognize in the Dravidians their Andite cousins submerged in the Sangik races, but they did find a well-advanced civilization. Despite biologic limitations, the Dravidians founded a superior civilization. It was well diffused throughout all India and has survived on down to modern times in the Deccan. 4. The Aryan Invasion of India (882.1) 79:4.1 The second Andite penetration of India was the Aryan invasion during a period of almost five hundred years in the middle of the third millennium before Christ. This migration marked the terminal exodus of the Andites from their homelands in Turkestan. (882.2) 79:4.2 The early Aryan centers were scattered over the northern half of India, notably in the northwest. These invaders never completed the conquest of the country and subsequently met their undoing in this neglect since their lesser numbers made them vulnerable to absorption by the Dravidians of the south, who subsequently overran the entire peninsula except the Himalayan provinces. (882.3) 79:4.3 The Aryans made very little racial impression on India except in the northern provinces. In the Deccan their influence was cultural and religious more than racial. The greater persistence of the so-called Aryan blood in northern India is not only due to their presence in these regions in greater numbers but also because they were reinforced by later conquerors, traders, and missionaries. Right on down to the first century before Christ there was a continuous infiltration of Aryan blood into the Punjab, the last influx being attendant upon the campaigns of the Hellenistic peoples. (882.4) 79:4.4 On the Gangetic plain Aryan and Dravidian eventually mingled to produce a high culture, and this center was later reinforced by contributions from the northeast, coming from China. (882.5) 79:4.5 In India many types of social organizations flourished from time to time, from the semidemocratic systems of the Aryans to despotic and monarchial forms of government. But the most characteristic feature of society was the persistence of the great social castes that were instituted by the Aryans in an effort to perpetuate racial identity. This elaborate caste system has been preserved on down to the present time. (882.6) 79:4.6 Of the four great castes, all but the first were established in the futile effort to prevent racial amalgamation of the Aryan conquerors with their inferior subjects. But the premier caste, the teacher-priests, stems from the Sethites; the Brahmans of the twentieth century after Christ are the lineal cultural descendants of the priests of the second garden, albeit their teachings differ greatly from those of their illustrious predecessors. (882.7) 79:4.7 When the Aryans entered India, they brought with them their concepts of Deity as they had been preserved in the lingering traditions of the religion of the second garden. But the Brahman priests were never able to withstand the pagan momentum built up by the sudden contact with the inferior religions of the Deccan after the racial obliteration of the Aryans. Thus the vast majority of the population fell into the bondage of the enslaving superstitions of inferior religions; and so it was that India failed to produce the high civilization which had been foreshadowed in earlier times. (882.8) 79:4.8 The spiritual awakening of the sixth century before Christ did not persist in India, having died out even before the Mohammedan invasion. But someday a greater Gautama may arise to lead all India in the search for the living God, and then the world will observe the fruition of the cultural potentialities of a versatile people so long comatose under the benumbing influence of an unprogressing spiritual vision. (883.1) 79:4.9 Culture does rest on a biologic foundation, but caste alone could not perpetuate the Aryan culture, for religion, true religion, is the indispensable source of that higher energy which drives men to establish a superior civilization based on human brotherhood. 5. Red Man and Yellow Man (883.2) 79:5.1 While the story of India is that of Andite conquest and eventual submergence in the older evolutionary peoples, the narrative of eastern Asia is more properly that of the primary Sangiks, particularly the red man and the yellow man. These two races largely escaped that admixture with the debased Neanderthal strain which so greatly retarded the blue man in Europe, thus preserving the superior potential of the primary Sangik type. (883.3) 79:5.2 While the early Neanderthalers were spread out over the entire breadth of Eurasia, the eastern wing was the more contaminated with debased animal strains. These subhuman types were pushed south by the fifth glacier, the same ice sheet which so long blocked Sangik migration into eastern Asia. And when the red man moved northeast around the highlands of India, he found northeastern Asia free from these subhuman types. The tribal organization of the red races was formed earlier than that of any other peoples, and they were the first to migrate from the central Asian focus of the Sangiks. The inferior Neanderthal strains were destroyed or driven off the mainland by the later migrating yellow tribes. But the red man had reigned supreme in eastern Asia for almost one hundred thousand years before the yellow tribes arrived. (883.4) 79:5.3 More than three hundred thousand years ago the main body of the yellow race entered China from the south as coastwise migrants. Each millennium they penetrated farther and farther inland, but they did not make contact with their migrating Tibetan brethren until comparatively recent times. (883.5) 79:5.4 Growing population pressure caused the northward-moving yellow race to begin to push into the hunting grounds of the red man. This encroachment, coupled with natural racial antagonism, culminated in increasing hostilities, and thus began the crucial struggle for the fertile lands of farther Asia. (883.6) 79:5.5 The story of this agelong contest between the red and yellow races is an epic of Urantia history. For over two hundred thousand years these two superior races waged bitter and unremitting warfare. In the earlier struggles the red men were generally successful, their raiding parties spreading havoc among the yellow settlements. But the yellow man was an apt pupil in the art of warfare, and he early manifested a marked ability to live peaceably with his compatriots; the Chinese were the first to learn that in union there is strength. The red tribes continued their internecine conflicts, and presently they began to suffer repeated defeats at the aggressive hands of the relentless Chinese, who continued their inexorable march northward. (883.7) 79:5.6 One hundred thousand years ago the decimated tribes of the red race were fighting with their backs to the retreating ice of the last glacier, and when the land passage to the West, over the Bering isthmus, became passable, these tribes were not slow in forsaking the inhospitable shores of the Asiatic continent. It is eighty-five thousand years since the last of the pure red men departed from Asia, but the long struggle left its genetic imprint upon the victorious yellow race. The northern Chinese peoples, together with the Andonite Siberians, assimilated much of the red stock and were in considerable measure benefited thereby.* (884.1) 79:5.7 The North American Indians never came in contact with even the Andite offspring of Adam and Eve, having been dispossessed of their Asiatic homelands some fifty thousand years before the coming of Adam. During the age of Andite migrations the pure red strains were spreading out over North America as nomadic tribes, hunters who practiced agriculture to a small extent. These races and cultural groups remained almost completely isolated from the remainder of the world from their arrival in the Americas down to the end of the first millennium of the Christian era, when they were discovered by the white races of Europe. Up to that time the Eskimos were the nearest to white men the northern tribes of red men had ever seen. (884.2) 79:5.8 The red and the yellow races are the only human stocks that ever achieved a high degree of civilization apart from the influences of the Andites. The oldest Amerindian culture was the Onamonalonton center in California, but this had long since vanished by 35,000 B.C. In Mexico, Central America, and in the mountains of South America the later and more enduring civilizations were founded by a race predominantly red but containing a considerable admixture of the yellow, orange, and blue. (884.3) 79:5.9 These civilizations were evolutionary products of the Sangiks, notwithstanding that traces of Andite blood reached Peru. Excepting the Eskimos in North America and a few Polynesian Andites in South America, the peoples of the Western Hemisphere had no contact with the rest of the world until the end of the first millennium after Christ. In the original Melchizedek plan for the improvement of the Urantia races it had been stipulated that one million of the pure-line descendants of Adam should go to upstep the red men of the Americas. 6. Dawn of Chinese Civilization (884.4) 79:6.1 Sometime after driving the red man across to North America, the expanding Chinese cleared the Andonites from the river valleys of eastern Asia, pushing them north into Siberia and west into Turkestan, where they were soon to come in contact with the superior culture of the Andites. (884.5) 79:6.2 In Burma and the peninsula of Indo-China the cultures of India and China mixed and blended to produce the successive civilizations of those regions. Here the vanished green race has persisted in larger proportion than anywhere else in the world. (884.6) 79:6.3 Many different races occupied the islands of the Pacific. In general, the southern and then more extensive islands were occupied by peoples carrying a heavy percentage of green and indigo blood. The northern islands were held by Andonites and, later on, by races embracing large proportions of the yellow and red stocks. The ancestors of the Japanese people were not driven off the mainland until 12,000 B.C., when they were dislodged by a powerful southern-coastwise thrust of the northern Chinese tribes. Their final exodus was not so much due to population pressure as to the initiative of a chieftain whom they came to regard as a divine personage. (885.1) 79:6.4 Like the peoples of India and the Levant, victorious tribes of the yellow man established their earliest centers along the coast and up the rivers. The coastal settlements fared poorly in later years as the increasing floods and the shifting courses of the rivers made the lowland cities untenable. (885.2) 79:6.5 Twenty thousand years ago the ancestors of the Chinese had built up a dozen strong centers of primitive culture and learning, especially along the Yellow River and the Yangtze. And now these centers began to be reinforced by the arrival of a steady stream of superior blended peoples from Sinkiang and Tibet. The migration from Tibet to the Yangtze valley was not so extensive as in the north, neither were the Tibetan centers so advanced as those of the Tarim basin. But both movements carried a certain amount of Andite blood eastward to the river settlements. (885.3) 79:6.6 The superiority of the ancient yellow race was due to four great factors: (885.4) 79:6.7 1. Genetic. Unlike their blue cousins in Europe, both the red and yellow races had largely escaped mixture with debased human stocks. The northern Chinese, already strengthened by small amounts of the superior red and Andonic strains, were soon to benefit by a considerable influx of Andite blood. The southern Chinese did not fare so well in this regard, and they had long suffered from absorption of the green race, while later on they were to be further weakened by the infiltration of the swarms of inferior peoples crowded out of India by the Dravidian-Andite invasion. And today in China there is a definite difference between the northern and southern races. (885.5) 79:6.8 2. Social. The yellow race early learned the value of peace among themselves. Their internal peaceableness so contributed to population increase as to insure the spread of their civilization among many millions. From 25,000 to 5000 B.C. the highest mass civilization on Urantia was in central and northern China. The yellow man was first to achieve a racial solidarity — the first to attain a large-scale cultural, social, and political civilization. (885.6) 79:6.9 The Chinese of 15,000 B.C. were aggressive militarists; they had not been weakened by an overreverence for the past, and numbering less than twelve million, they formed a compact body speaking a common language. During this age they built up a real nation, much more united and homogeneous than their political unions of historic times. (885.7) 79:6.10 3. Spiritual. During the age of Andite migrations the Chinese were among the more spiritual peoples of earth. Long adherence to the worship of the One Truth proclaimed by Singlangton kept them ahead of most of the other races. The stimulus of a progressive and advanced religion is often a decisive factor in cultural development; as India languished, so China forged ahead under the invigorating stimulus of a religion in which truth was enshrined as the supreme Deity. (885.8) 79:6.11 This worship of truth was provocative of research and fearless exploration of the laws of nature and the potentials of mankind. The Chinese of even six thousand years ago were still keen students and aggressive in their pursuit of truth. (885.9) 79:6.12 4. Geographic. China is protected by the mountains to the west and the Pacific to the east. Only in the north is the way open to attack, and from the days of the red man to the coming of the later descendants of the Andites, the north was not occupied by any aggressive race. (886.1) 79:6.13 And but for the mountain barriers and the later decline in spiritual culture, the yellow race undoubtedly would have attracted to itself the larger part of the Andite migrations from Turkestan and unquestionably would have quickly dominated world civilization. 7. The Andites Enter China (886.2) 79:7.1 About fifteen thousand years ago the Andites, in considerable numbers, were traversing the pass of Ti Tao and spreading out over the upper valley of the Yellow River among the Chinese settlements of Kansu. Presently they penetrated eastward to Honan, where the most progressive settlements were situated. This infiltration from the west was about half Andonite and half Andite. (886.3) 79:7.2 The northern centers of culture along the Yellow River had always been more progressive than the southern settlements on the Yangtze. Within a few thousand years after the arrival of even the small numbers of these superior mortals, the settlements along the Yellow River had forged ahead of the Yangtze villages and had achieved an advanced position over their brethren in the south which has ever since been maintained. (886.4) 79:7.3 It was not that there were so many of the Andites, nor that their culture was so superior, but amalgamation with them produced a more versatile stock. The northern Chinese received just enough of the Andite strain to mildly stimulate their innately able minds but not enough to fire them with the restless, exploratory curiosity so characteristic of the northern white races. This more limited infusion of Andite inheritance was less disturbing to the innate stability of the Sangik type. (886.5) 79:7.4 The later waves of Andites brought with them certain of the cultural advances of Mesopotamia; this is especially true of the last waves of migration from the west. They greatly improved the economic and educational practices of the northern Chinese; and while their influence upon the religious culture of the yellow race was short-lived, their later descendants contributed much to a subsequent spiritual awakening. But the Andite traditions of the beauty of Eden and Dalamatia did influence Chinese traditions; early Chinese legends place “the land of the gods” in the west. (886.6) 79:7.5 The Chinese people did not begin to build cities and engage in manufacture until after 10,000 B.C., subsequent to the climatic changes in Turkestan and the arrival of the later Andite immigrants. The infusion of this new blood did not add so much to the civilization of the yellow man as it stimulated the further and rapid development of the latent tendencies of the superior Chinese stocks. From Honan to Shensi the potentials of an advanced civilization were coming to fruit. Metalworking and all the arts of manufacture date from these days. (886.7) 79:7.6 The similarities between certain of the early Chinese and Mesopotamian methods of time reckoning, astronomy, and governmental administration were due to the commercial relationships between these two remotely situated centers. Chinese merchants traveled the overland routes through Turkestan to Mesopotamia even in the days of the Sumerians. Nor was this exchange one-sided — the valley of the Euphrates benefited considerably thereby, as did the peoples of the Gangetic plain. But the climatic changes and the nomadic invasions of the third millennium before Christ greatly reduced the volume of trade passing over the caravan trails of central Asia. 8. Later Chinese Civilization (887.1) 79:8.1 While the red man suffered from too much warfare, it is not altogether amiss to say that the development of statehood among the Chinese was delayed by the thoroughness of their conquest of Asia. They had a great potential of racial solidarity, but it failed properly to develop because the continuous driving stimulus of the ever-present danger of external aggression was lacking. (887.2) 79:8.2 With the completion of the conquest of eastern Asia the ancient military state gradually disintegrated — past wars were forgotten. Of the epic struggle with the red race there persisted only the hazy tradition of an ancient contest with the archer peoples. The Chinese early turned to agricultural pursuits, which contributed further to their pacific tendencies, while a population well below the land-man ratio for agriculture still further contributed to the growing peacefulness of the country. (887.3) 79:8.3 Consciousness of past achievements (somewhat diminished in the present), the conservatism of an overwhelmingly agricultural people, and a well-developed family life equaled the birth of ancestor veneration, culminating in the custom of so honoring the men of the past as to border on worship. A very similar attitude prevailed among the white races in Europe for some five hundred years following the disruption of Greco-Roman civilization.* (887.4) 79:8.4 The belief in, and worship of, the “One Truth” as taught by Singlangton never entirely died out; but as time passed, the search for new and higher truth became overshadowed by a growing tendency to venerate that which was already established. Slowly the genius of the yellow race became diverted from the pursuit of the unknown to the preservation of the known. And this is the reason for the stagnation of what had been the world’s most rapidly progressing civilization. (887.5) 79:8.5 Between 4000 and 500 B.C. the political reunification of the yellow race was consummated, but the cultural union of the Yangtze and Yellow river centers had already been effected. This political reunification of the later tribal groups was not without conflict, but the societal opinion of war remained low; ancestor worship, increasing dialects, and no call for military action for thousands upon thousands of years had rendered this people ultrapeaceful. (887.6) 79:8.6 Despite failure to fulfill the promise of an early development of advanced statehood, the yellow race did progressively move forward in the realization of the arts of civilization, especially in the realms of agriculture and horticulture. The hydraulic problems faced by the agriculturists in Shensi and Honan demanded group co-operation for solution. Such irrigation and soil-conservation difficulties contributed in no small measure to the development of interdependence with the consequent promotion of peace among farming groups. (887.7) 79:8.7 Soon developments in writing, together with the establishment of schools, contributed to the dissemination of knowledge on a previously unequaled scale. But the cumbersome nature of the ideographic writing system placed a numerical limit upon the learned classes despite the early appearance of printing. And above all else, the process of social standardization and religio-philosophic dogmatization continued apace. The religious development of ancestor veneration became further complicated by a flood of superstitions involving nature worship, but lingering vestiges of a real concept of God remained preserved in the imperial worship of Shang-ti. (888.1) 79:8.8 The great weakness of ancestor veneration is that it promotes a backward-looking philosophy. However wise it may be to glean wisdom from the past, it is folly to regard the past as the exclusive source of truth. Truth is relative and expanding; it lives always in the present, achieving new expression in each generation of men — even in each human life. (888.2) 79:8.9 The great strength in a veneration of ancestry is the value that such an attitude places upon the family. The amazing stability and persistence of Chinese culture is a consequence of the paramount position accorded the family, for civilization is directly dependent on the effective functioning of the family; and in China the family attained a social importance, even a religious significance, approached by few other peoples. (888.3) 79:8.10 The filial devotion and family loyalty exacted by the growing cult of ancestor worship insured the building up of superior family relationships and of enduring family groups, all of which facilitated the following factors in the preservation of civilization: (888.4) 79:8.11 1. Conservation of property and wealth. (888.5) 79:8.12 2. Pooling of the experience of more than one generation. (888.6) 79:8.13 3. Efficient education of children in the arts and sciences of the past. (888.7) 79:8.14 4. Development of a strong sense of duty, the enhancement of morality, and the augmentation of ethical sensitivity. (888.8) 79:8.15 The formative period of Chinese civilization, opening with the coming of the Andites, continues on down to the great ethical, moral, and semireligious awakening of the sixth century before Christ. And Chinese tradition preserves the hazy record of the evolutionary past; the transition from mother- to father-family, the establishment of agriculture, the development of architecture, the initiation of industry — all these are successively narrated. And this story presents, with greater accuracy than any other similar account, the picture of the magnificent ascent of a superior people from the levels of barbarism. During this time they passed from a primitive agricultural society to a higher social organization embracing cities, manufacture, metalworking, commercial exchange, government, writing, mathematics, art, science, and printing. (888.9) 79:8.16 And so the ancient civilization of the yellow race has persisted down through the centuries. It is almost forty thousand years since the first important advances were made in Chinese culture, and though there have been many retrogressions, the civilization of the sons of Han comes the nearest of all to presenting an unbroken picture of continual progression right on down to the times of the twentieth century. The mechanical and religious developments of the white races have been of a high order, but they have never excelled the Chinese in family loyalty, group ethics, or personal morality. (888.10) 79:8.17 This ancient culture has contributed much to human happiness; millions of human beings have lived and died, blessed by its achievements. For centuries this great civilization has rested upon the laurels of the past, but it is even now reawakening to envision anew the transcendent goals of mortal existence, once again to take up the unremitting struggle for never-ending progress. (888.11) 79:8.18 [Presented by an Archangel of Nebadon.]

The Later Evolution of Religion (1003.1) 92:0.1 MAN possessed a religion of natural origin as a part of his evolutionary experience long before any systematic revelations were made on Urantia. But this religion of natural origin was, in itself, the product of man’s superanimal endowments. Evolutionary religion arose slowly throughout the millenniums of mankind’s experiential career through the ministry of the following influences operating within, and impinging upon, savage, barbarian, and civilized man: (1003.2) 92:0.2 1. The adjutant of worship — the appearance in animal consciousness of superanimal potentials for reality perception. This might be termed the primordial human instinct for Deity. (1003.3) 92:0.3 2. The adjutant of wisdom — the manifestation in a worshipful mind of the tendency to direct its adoration in higher channels of expression and toward ever-expanding concepts of Deity reality. (1003.4) 92:0.4 3. The Holy Spirit — this is the initial supermind bestowal, and it unfailingly appears in all bona fide human personalities. This ministry to a worship-craving and wisdom-desiring mind creates the capacity to self-realize the postulate of human survival, both in theologic concept and as an actual and factual personality experience. (1003.5) 92:0.5 The co-ordinate functioning of these three divine ministrations is quite sufficient to initiate and prosecute the growth of evolutionary religion. These influences are later augmented by Thought Adjusters, seraphim, and the Spirit of Truth, all of which accelerate the rate of religious development. These agencies have long functioned on Urantia, and they will continue here as long as this planet remains an inhabited sphere. Much of the potential of these divine agencies has never yet had opportunity for expression; much will be revealed in the ages to come as mortal religion ascends, level by level, toward the supernal heights of morontia value and spirit truth. 1. The Evolutionary Nature of Religion (1003.6) 92:1.1 The evolution of religion has been traced from early fear and ghosts down through many successive stages of development, including those efforts first to coerce and then to cajole the spirits. Tribal fetishes grew into totems and tribal gods; magic formulas became modern prayers. Circumcision, at first a sacrifice, became a hygienic procedure. (1003.7) 92:1.2 Religion progressed from nature worship up through ghost worship to fetishism throughout the savage childhood of the races. With the dawn of civilization the human race espoused the more mystic and symbolic beliefs, while now, with approaching maturity, mankind is ripening for the appreciation of real religion, even a beginning of the revelation of truth itself. (1004.1) 92:1.3 Religion arises as a biologic reaction of mind to spiritual beliefs and the environment; it is the last thing to perish or change in a race. Religion is society’s adjustment, in any age, to that which is mysterious. As a social institution it embraces rites, symbols, cults, scriptures, altars, shrines, and temples. Holy water, relics, fetishes, charms, vestments, bells, drums, and priesthoods are common to all religions. And it is impossible entirely to divorce purely evolved religion from either magic or sorcery. (1004.2) 92:1.4 Mystery and power have always stimulated religious feelings and fears, while emotion has ever functioned as a powerful conditioning factor in their development. Fear has always been the basic religious stimulus. Fear fashions the gods of evolutionary religion and motivates the religious ritual of the primitive believers. As civilization advances, fear becomes modified by reverence, admiration, respect, and sympathy and is then further conditioned by remorse and repentance. (1004.3) 92:1.5 One Asiatic people taught that “God is a great fear”; that is the outgrowth of purely evolutionary religion. Jesus, the revelation of the highest type of religious living, proclaimed that “God is love.” 2. Religion and the Mores (1004.4) 92:2.1 Religion is the most rigid and unyielding of all human institutions, but it does tardily adjust to changing society. Eventually, evolutionary religion does reflect the changing mores, which, in turn, may have been affected by revealed religion. Slowly, surely, but grudgingly, does religion (worship) follow in the wake of wisdom — knowledge directed by experiential reason and illuminated by divine revelation. (1004.5) 92:2.2 Religion clings to the mores; that which was is ancient and supposedly sacred. For this reason and no other, stone implements persisted long into the age of bronze and iron. This statement is of record: “And if you will make me an altar of stone, you shall not build it of hewn stone, for, if you use your tools in making it, you have polluted it.” Even today, the Hindus kindle their altar fires by using a primitive fire drill. In the course of evolutionary religion, novelty has always been regarded as sacrilege. The sacrament must consist, not of new and manufactured food, but of the most primitive of viands: “The flesh roasted with fire and unleavened bread served with bitter herbs.” All types of social usage and even legal procedures cling to the old forms. (1004.6) 92:2.3 When modern man wonders at the presentation of so much in the scriptures of different religions that may be regarded as obscene, he should pause to consider that passing generations have feared to eliminate what their ancestors deemed to be holy and sacred. A great deal that one generation might look upon as obscene, preceding generations have considered a part of their accepted mores, even as approved religious rituals. A considerable amount of religious controversy has been occasioned by the never-ending attempts to reconcile olden but reprehensible practices with newly advanced reason, to find plausible theories in justification of creedal perpetuation of ancient and outworn customs. (1004.7) 92:2.4 But it is only foolish to attempt the too sudden acceleration of religious growth. A race or nation can only assimilate from any advanced religion that which is reasonably consistent and compatible with its current evolutionary status, plus its genius for adaptation. Social, climatic, political, and economic conditions are all influential in determining the course and progress of religious evolution. Social morality is not determined by religion, that is, by evolutionary religion; rather are the forms of religion dictated by the racial morality. (1005.1) 92:2.5 Races of men only superficially accept a strange and new religion; they actually adjust it to their mores and old ways of believing. This is well illustrated by the example of a certain New Zealand tribe whose priests, after nominally accepting Christianity, professed to have received direct revelations from Gabriel to the effect that this selfsame tribe had become the chosen people of God and directing that they be permitted freely to indulge in loose sex relations and numerous other of their olden and reprehensible customs. And immediately all of the new-made Christians went over to this new and less exacting version of Christianity. (1005.2) 92:2.6 Religion has at one time or another sanctioned all sorts of contrary and inconsistent behavior, has at some time approved of practically all that is now regarded as immoral or sinful. Conscience, untaught by experience and unaided by reason, never has been, and never can be, a safe and unerring guide to human conduct. Conscience is not a divine voice speaking to the human soul. It is merely the sum total of the moral and ethical content of the mores of any current stage of existence; it simply represents the humanly conceived ideal of reaction in any given set of circumstances. 3. The Nature of Evolutionary Religion (1005.3) 92:3.1 The study of human religion is the examination of the fossil-bearing social strata of past ages. The mores of the anthropomorphic gods are a truthful reflection of the morals of the men who first conceived such deities. Ancient religions and mythology faithfully portray the beliefs and traditions of peoples long since lost in obscurity. These olden cult practices persist alongside newer economic customs and social evolutions and, of course, appear grossly inconsistent. The remnants of the cult present a true picture of the racial religions of the past. Always remember, the cults are formed, not to discover truth, but rather to promulgate their creeds. (1005.4) 92:3.2 Religion has always been largely a matter of rites, rituals, observances, ceremonies, and dogmas. It has usually become tainted with that persistently mischief-making error, the chosen-people delusion. The cardinal religious ideas of incantation, inspiration, revelation, propitiation, repentance, atonement, intercession, sacrifice, prayer, confession, worship, survival after death, sacrament, ritual, ransom, salvation, redemption, covenant, uncleanness, purification, prophecy, original sin — they all go back to the early times of primordial ghost fear. (1005.5) 92:3.3 Primitive religion is nothing more nor less than the struggle for material existence extended to embrace existence beyond the grave. The observances of such a creed represented the extension of the self-maintenance struggle into the domain of an imagined ghost-spirit world. But when tempted to criticize evolutionary religion, be careful. Remember, that is what happened; it is a historical fact. And further recall that the power of any idea lies, not in its certainty or truth, but rather in the vividness of its human appeal. (1006.1) 92:3.4 Evolutionary religion makes no provision for change or revision; unlike science, it does not provide for its own progressive correction. Evolved religion commands respect because its followers believe it is The Truth; “the faith once delivered to the saints” must, in theory, be both final and infallible. The cult resists development because real progress is certain to modify or destroy the cult itself; therefore must revision always be forced upon it. (1006.2) 92:3.5 Only two influences can modify and uplift the dogmas of natural religion: the pressure of the slowly advancing mores and the periodic illumination of epochal revelation. And it is not strange that progress was slow; in ancient days, to be progressive or inventive meant to be killed as a sorcerer. The cult advances slowly in generation epochs and agelong cycles. But it does move forward. Evolutionary belief in ghosts laid the foundation for a philosophy of revealed religion which will eventually destroy the superstition of its origin. (1006.3) 92:3.6 Religion has handicapped social development in many ways, but without religion there would have been no enduring morality nor ethics, no worth-while civilization. Religion enmothered much nonreligious culture: Sculpture originated in idol making, architecture in temple building, poetry in incantations, music in worship chants, drama in the acting for spirit guidance, and dancing in the seasonal worship festivals. (1006.4) 92:3.7 But while calling attention to the fact that religion was essential to the development and preservation of civilization, it should be recorded that natural religion has also done much to cripple and handicap the very civilization which it otherwise fostered and maintained. Religion has hampered industrial activities and economic development; it has been wasteful of labor and has squandered capital; it has not always been helpful to the family; it has not adequately fostered peace and good will; it has sometimes neglected education and retarded science; it has unduly impoverished life for the pretended enrichment of death. Evolutionary religion, human religion, has indeed been guilty of all these and many more mistakes, errors, and blunders; nevertheless, it did maintain cultural ethics, civilized morality, and social coherence, and made it possible for later revealed religion to compensate for these many evolutionary shortcomings. (1006.5) 92:3.8 Evolutionary religion has been man’s most expensive but incomparably effective institution. Human religion can be justified only in the light of evolutionary civilization. If man were not the ascendant product of animal evolution, then would such a course of religious development stand without justification. (1006.6) 92:3.9 Religion facilitated the accumulation of capital; it fostered work of certain kinds; the leisure of the priests promoted art and knowledge; the race, in the end, gained much as a result of all these early errors in ethical technique. The shamans, honest and dishonest, were terribly expensive, but they were worth all they cost. The learned professions and science itself emerged from the parasitical priesthoods. Religion fostered civilization and provided societal continuity; it has been the moral police force of all time. Religion provided that human discipline and self-control which made wisdom possible. Religion is the efficient scourge of evolution which ruthlessly drives indolent and suffering humanity from its natural state of intellectual inertia forward and upward to the higher levels of reason and wisdom. (1006.7) 92:3.10 And this sacred heritage of animal ascent, evolutionary religion, must ever continue to be refined and ennobled by the continuous censorship of revealed religion and by the fiery furnace of genuine science. 4. The Gift of Revelation (1007.1) 92:4.1 Revelation is evolutionary but always progressive. Down through the ages of a world’s history, the revelations of religion are ever-expanding and successively more enlightening. It is the mission of revelation to sort and censor the successive religions of evolution. But if revelation is to exalt and upstep the religions of evolution, then must such divine visitations portray teachings which are not too far removed from the thought and reactions of the age in which they are presented. Thus must and does revelation always keep in touch with evolution. Always must the religion of revelation be limited by man’s capacity of receptivity. (1007.2) 92:4.2 But regardless of apparent connection or derivation, the religions of revelation are always characterized by a belief in some Deity of final value and in some concept of the survival of personality identity after death. (1007.3) 92:4.3 Evolutionary religion is sentimental, not logical. It is man’s reaction to belief in a hypothetical ghost-spirit world — the human belief-reflex, excited by the realization and fear of the unknown. Revelatory religion is propounded by the real spiritual world; it is the response of the superintellectual cosmos to the mortal hunger to believe in, and depend upon, the universal Deities. Evolutionary religion pictures the circuitous gropings of humanity in quest of truth; revelatory religion is that very truth. (1007.4) 92:4.4 There have been many events of religious revelation but only five of epochal significance. These were as follows: (1007.5) 92:4.5 1. The Dalamatian teachings. The true concept of the First Source and Center was first promulgated on Urantia by the one hundred corporeal members of Prince Caligastia’s staff. This expanding revelation of Deity went on for more than three hundred thousand years until it was suddenly terminated by the planetary secession and the disruption of the teaching regime. Except for the work of Van, the influence of the Dalamatian revelation was practically lost to the whole world. Even the Nodites had forgotten this truth by the time of Adam’s arrival. Of all who received the teachings of the one hundred, the red men held them longest, but the idea of the Great Spirit was but a hazy concept in Amerindian religion when contact with Christianity greatly clarified and strengthened it. (1007.6) 92:4.6 2. The Edenic teachings. Adam and Eve again portrayed the concept of the Father of all to the evolutionary peoples. The disruption of the first Eden halted the course of the Adamic revelation before it had ever fully started. But the aborted teachings of Adam were carried on by the Sethite priests, and some of these truths have never been entirely lost to the world. The entire trend of Levantine religious evolution was modified by the teachings of the Sethites. But by 2500 B.C. mankind had largely lost sight of the revelation sponsored in the days of Eden. (1007.7) 92:4.7 3. Melchizedek of Salem. This emergency Son of Nebadon inaugurated the third revelation of truth on Urantia. The cardinal precepts of his teachings were trust and faith. He taught trust in the omnipotent beneficence of God and proclaimed that faith was the act by which men earned God’s favor. His teachings gradually commingled with the beliefs and practices of various evolutionary religions and finally developed into those theologic systems present on Urantia at the opening of the first millennium after Christ. (1008.1) 92:4.8 4. Jesus of Nazareth. Christ Michael presented for the fourth time to Urantia the concept of God as the Universal Father, and this teaching has generally persisted ever since. The essence of his teaching was love and service, the loving worship which a creature son voluntarily gives in recognition of, and response to, the loving ministry of God his Father; the freewill service which such creature sons bestow upon their brethren in the joyous realization that in this service they are likewise serving God the Father. (1008.2) 92:4.9 5. The Urantia Papers. The papers, of which this is one, constitute the most recent presentation of truth to the mortals of Urantia. These papers differ from all previous revelations, for they are not the work of a single universe personality but a composite presentation by many beings. But no revelation short of the attainment of the Universal Father can ever be complete. All other celestial ministrations are no more than partial, transient, and practically adapted to local conditions in time and space. While such admissions as this may possibly detract from the immediate force and authority of all revelations, the time has arrived on Urantia when it is advisable to make such frank statements, even at the risk of weakening the future influence and authority of this, the most recent of the revelations of truth to the mortal races of Urantia. 5. The Great Religious Leaders (1008.3) 92:5.1 In evolutionary religion, the gods are conceived to exist in the likeness of man’s image; in revelatory religion, men are taught that they are God’s sons — even fashioned in the finite image of divinity; in the synthesized beliefs compounded from the teachings of revelation and the products of evolution, the God concept is a blend of: (1008.4) 92:5.2 1. The pre-existent ideas of the evolutionary cults. (1008.5) 92:5.3 2. The sublime ideals of revealed religion. (1008.6) 92:5.4 3. The personal viewpoints of the great religious leaders, the prophets and teachers of mankind. (1008.7) 92:5.5 Most great religious epochs have been inaugurated by the life and teachings of some outstanding personality; leadership has originated a majority of the worth-while moral movements of history. And men have always tended to venerate the leader, even at the expense of his teachings; to revere his personality, even though losing sight of the truths which he proclaimed. And this is not without reason; there is an instinctive longing in the heart of evolutionary man for help from above and beyond. This craving is designed to anticipate the appearance on earth of the Planetary Prince and the later Material Sons. On Urantia man has been deprived of these superhuman leaders and rulers, and therefore does he constantly seek to make good this loss by enshrouding his human leaders with legends pertaining to supernatural origins and miraculous careers. (1008.8) 92:5.6 Many races have conceived of their leaders as being born of virgins; their careers are liberally sprinkled with miraculous episodes, and their return is always expected by their respective groups. In central Asia the tribesmen still look for the return of Genghis Khan; in Tibet, China, and India it is Buddha; in Islam it is Mohammed; among the Amerinds it was Hesunanin Onamonalonton; with the Hebrews it was, in general, Adam’s return as a material ruler. In Babylon the god Marduk was a perpetuation of the Adam legend, the son-of-God idea, the connecting link between man and God. Following the appearance of Adam on earth, so-called sons of God were common among the world races. (1009.1) 92:5.7 But regardless of the superstitious awe in which they were often held, it remains a fact that these teachers were the temporal personality fulcrums on which the levers of revealed truth depended for the advancement of the morality, philosophy, and religion of mankind. (1009.2) 92:5.8 There have been hundreds upon hundreds of religious leaders in the million-year human history of Urantia from Onagar to Guru Nanak. During this time there have been many ebbs and flows of the tide of religious truth and spiritual faith, and each renaissance of Urantian religion has, in the past, been identified with the life and teachings of some religious leader. In considering the teachers of recent times, it may prove helpful to group them into the seven major religious epochs of post-Adamic Urantia: (1009.3) 92:5.9 1. The Sethite period. The Sethite priests, as regenerated under the leadership of Amosad, became the great post-Adamic teachers. They functioned throughout the lands of the Andites, and their influence persisted longest among the Greeks, Sumerians, and Hindus. Among the latter they have continued to the present time as the Brahmans of the Hindu faith. The Sethites and their followers never entirely lost the Trinity concept revealed by Adam. (1009.4) 92:5.10 2. Era of the Melchizedek missionaries. Urantia religion was in no small measure regenerated by the efforts of those teachers who were commissioned by Machiventa Melchizedek when he lived and taught at Salem almost two thousand years before Christ. These missionaries proclaimed faith as the price of favor with God, and their teachings, though unproductive of any immediately appearing religions, nevertheless formed the foundations on which later teachers of truth were to build the religions of Urantia. (1009.5) 92:5.11 3. The post-Melchizedek era. Though Amenemope and Ikhnaton both taught in this period, the outstanding religious genius of the post-Melchizedek era was the leader of a group of Levantine Bedouins and the founder of the Hebrew religion — Moses. Moses taught monotheism. Said he: “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one God.” “The Lord he is God. There is none beside him.” He persistently sought to uproot the remnants of the ghost cult among his people, even prescribing the death penalty for its practitioners. The monotheism of Moses was adulterated by his successors, but in later times they did return to many of his teachings. The greatness of Moses lies in his wisdom and sagacity. Other men have had greater concepts of God, but no one man was ever so successful in inducing large numbers of people to adopt such advanced beliefs. (1009.6) 92:5.12 4. The sixth century before Christ. Many men arose to proclaim truth in this, one of the greatest centuries of religious awakening ever witnessed on Urantia. Among these should be recorded Gautama, Confucius, Lao-tse, Zoroaster, and the Jainist teachers. The teachings of Gautama have become widespread in Asia, and he is revered as the Buddha by millions. Confucius was to Chinese morality what Plato was to Greek philosophy, and while there were religious repercussions to the teachings of both, strictly speaking, neither was a religious teacher; Lao-tse envisioned more of God in Tao than did Confucius in humanity or Plato in idealism. Zoroaster, while much affected by the prevalent concept of dual spiritism, the good and the bad, at the same time definitely exalted the idea of one eternal Deity and of the ultimate victory of light over darkness. (1010.1) 92:5.13 5. The first century after Christ. As a religious teacher, Jesus of Nazareth started out with the cult which had been established by John the Baptist and progressed as far as he could away from fasts and forms. Aside from Jesus, Paul of Tarsus and Philo of Alexandria were the greatest teachers of this era. Their concepts of religion have played a dominant part in the evolution of that faith which bears the name of Christ. (1010.2) 92:5.14 6. The sixth century after Christ. Mohammed founded a religion which was superior to many of the creeds of his time. His was a protest against the social demands of the faiths of foreigners and against the incoherence of the religious life of his own people. (1010.3) 92:5.15 7. The fifteenth century after Christ. This period witnessed two religious movements: the disruption of the unity of Christianity in the Occident and the synthesis of a new religion in the Orient. In Europe institutionalized Christianity had attained that degree of inelasticity which rendered further growth incompatible with unity. In the Orient the combined teachings of Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism were synthesized by Nanak and his followers into Sikhism, one of the most advanced religions of Asia. (1010.4) 92:5.16 The future of Urantia will doubtless be characterized by the appearance of teachers of religious truth — the Fatherhood of God and the fraternity of all creatures. But it is to be hoped that the ardent and sincere efforts of these future prophets will be directed less toward the strengthening of interreligious barriers and more toward the augmentation of the religious brotherhood of spiritual worship among the many followers of the differing intellectual theologies which so characterize Urantia of Satania. 6. The Composite Religions (1010.5) 92:6.1 Twentieth-century Urantia religions present an interesting study of the social evolution of man’s worship impulse. Many faiths have progressed very little since the days of the ghost cult. The Pygmies of Africa have no religious reactions as a class, although some of them believe slightly in a spirit environment. They are today just where primitive man was when the evolution of religion began. The basic belief of primitive religion was survival after death. The idea of worshiping a personal God indicates advanced evolutionary development, even the first stage of revelation. The Dyaks have evolved only the most primitive religious practices. The comparatively recent Eskimos and Amerinds had very meager concepts of God; they believed in ghosts and had an indefinite idea of survival of some sort after death. Present-day native Australians have only a ghost fear, dread of the dark, and a crude ancestor veneration. The Zulus are just evolving a religion of ghost fear and sacrifice. Many African tribes, except through missionary work of Christians and Mohammedans, are not yet beyond the fetish stage of religious evolution. But some groups have long held to the idea of monotheism, like the onetime Thracians, who also believed in immortality. (1010.6) 92:6.2 On Urantia, evolutionary and revelatory religion are progressing side by side while they blend and coalesce into the diversified theologic systems found in the world in the times of the inditement of these papers. These religions, the religions of twentieth-century Urantia, may be enumerated as follows: (1011.1) 92:6.3 1. Hinduism — the most ancient. (1011.2) 92:6.4 2. The Hebrew religion. (1011.3) 92:6.5 3. Buddhism. (1011.4) 92:6.6 4. The Confucian teachings. (1011.5) 92:6.7 5. The Taoist beliefs. (1011.6) 92:6.8 6. Zoroastrianism. (1011.7) 92:6.9 7. Shinto. (1011.8) 92:6.10 8. Jainism. (1011.9) 92:6.11 9. Christianity. (1011.10) 92:6.12 10. Islam. (1011.11) 92:6.13 11. Sikhism — the most recent. (1011.12) 92:6.14 The most advanced religions of ancient times were Judaism and Hinduism, and each respectively has greatly influenced the course of religious development in Orient and Occident. Both Hindus and Hebrews believed that their religions were inspired and revealed, and they believed all others to be decadent forms of the one true faith. (1011.13) 92:6.15 India is divided among Hindu, Sikh, Mohammedan, and Jain, each picturing God, man, and the universe as these are variously conceived. China follows the Taoist and the Confucian teachings; Shinto is revered in Japan. (1011.14) 92:6.16 The great international, interracial faiths are the Hebraic, Buddhist, Christian, and Islamic. Buddhism stretches from Ceylon and Burma through Tibet and China to Japan. It has shown an adaptability to the mores of many peoples that has been equaled only by Christianity. (1011.15) 92:6.17 The Hebrew religion encompasses the philosophic transition from polytheism to monotheism; it is an evolutionary link between the religions of evolution and the religions of revelation. The Hebrews were the only western people to follow their early evolutionary gods straight through to the God of revelation. But this truth never became widely accepted until the days of Isaiah, who once again taught the blended idea of a racial deity combined with a Universal Creator: “O Lord of Hosts, God of Israel, you are God, even you alone; you have made heaven and earth.” At one time the hope of the survival of Occidental civilization lay in the sublime Hebraic concepts of goodness and the advanced Hellenic concepts of beauty. (1011.16) 92:6.18 The Christian religion is the religion about the life and teachings of Christ based upon the theology of Judaism, modified further through the assimilation of certain Zoroastrian teachings and Greek philosophy, and formulated primarily by three individuals: Philo, Peter, and Paul. It has passed through many phases of evolution since the time of Paul and has become so thoroughly Occidentalized that many non-European peoples very naturally look upon Christianity as a strange revelation of a strange God and for strangers. (1011.17) 92:6.19 Islam is the religio-cultural connective of North Africa, the Levant, and southeastern Asia. It was Jewish theology in connection with the later Christian teachings that made Islam monotheistic. The followers of Mohammed stumbled at the advanced teachings of the Trinity; they could not comprehend the doctrine of three divine personalities and one Deity. It is always difficult to induce evolutionary minds suddenly to accept advanced revealed truth. Man is an evolutionary creature and in the main must get his religion by evolutionary techniques. (1012.1) 92:6.20 Ancestor worship onetime constituted a decided advance in religious evolution, but it is both amazing and regrettable that this primitive concept persists in China, Japan, and India amidst so much that is relatively more advanced, such as Buddhism and Hinduism. In the Occident, ancestor worship developed into the veneration of national gods and respect for racial heroes. In the twentieth century this hero-venerating nationalistic religion makes its appearance in the various radical and nationalistic secularisms which characterize many races and nations of the Occident. Much of this same attitude is also found in the great universities and the larger industrial communities of the English-speaking peoples. Not very different from these concepts is the idea that religion is but “a shared quest of the good life.” The “national religions” are nothing more than a reversion to the early Roman emperor worship and to Shinto — worship of the state in the imperial family. 7. The Further Evolution of Religion (1012.2) 92:7.1 Religion can never become a scientific fact. Philosophy may, indeed, rest on a scientific basis, but religion will ever remain either evolutionary or revelatory, or a possible combination of both, as it is in the world today. (1012.3) 92:7.2 New religions cannot be invented; they are either evolved, or else they are suddenly revealed. All new evolutionary religions are merely advancing expressions of the old beliefs, new adaptations and adjustments. The old does not cease to exist; it is merged with the new, even as Sikhism budded and blossomed out of the soil and forms of Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, and other contemporary cults. Primitive religion was very democratic; the savage was quick to borrow or lend. Only with revealed religion did autocratic and intolerant theologic egotism appear. (1012.4) 92:7.3 The many religions of Urantia are all good to the extent that they bring man to God and bring the realization of the Father to man. It is a fallacy for any group of religionists to conceive of their creed as The Truth; such attitudes bespeak more of theological arrogance than of certainty of faith. There is not a Urantia religion that could not profitably study and assimilate the best of the truths contained in every other faith, for all contain truth. Religionists would do better to borrow the best in their neighbors’ living spiritual faith rather than to denounce the worst in their lingering superstitions and outworn rituals. (1012.5) 92:7.4 All these religions have arisen as a result of man’s variable intellectual response to his identical spiritual leading. They can never hope to attain a uniformity of creeds, dogmas, and rituals — these are intellectual; but they can, and some day will, realize a unity in true worship of the Father of all, for this is spiritual, and it is forever true, in the spirit all men are equal. (1012.6) 92:7.5 Primitive religion was largely a material-value consciousness, but civilization elevates religious values, for true religion is the devotion of the self to the service of meaningful and supreme values. As religion evolves, ethics becomes the philosophy of morals, and morality becomes the discipline of self by the standards of highest meanings and supreme values — divine and spiritual ideals. And thus religion becomes a spontaneous and exquisite devotion, the living experience of the loyalty of love. (1013.1) 92:7.6 The quality of a religion is indicated by: (1013.2) 92:7.7 1. Level of values — loyalties.* (1013.3) 92:7.8 2. Depth of meanings — the sensitization of the individual to the idealistic appreciation of these highest values. (1013.4) 92:7.9 3. Consecration intensity — the degree of devotion to these divine values. (1013.5) 92:7.10 4. The unfettered progress of the personality in this cosmic path of idealistic spiritual living, realization of sonship with God and never-ending progressive citizenship in the universe. (1013.6) 92:7.11 Religious meanings progress in self-consciousness when the child transfers his ideas of omnipotence from his parents to God. And the entire religious experience of such a child is largely dependent on whether fear or love has dominated the parent-child relationship. Slaves have always experienced great difficulty in transferring their master-fear into concepts of God-love. Civilization, science, and advanced religions must deliver mankind from those fears born of the dread of natural phenomena. And so should greater enlightenment deliver educated mortals from all dependence on intermediaries in communion with Deity. (1013.7) 92:7.12 These intermediate stages of idolatrous hesitation in the transfer of veneration from the human and the visible to the divine and invisible are inevitable, but they should be shortened by the consciousness of the facilitating ministry of the indwelling divine spirit. Nevertheless, man has been profoundly influenced, not only by his concepts of Deity, but also by the character of the heroes whom he has chosen to honor. It is most unfortunate that those who have come to venerate the divine and risen Christ should have overlooked the man — the valiant and courageous hero — Joshua ben Joseph. (1013.8) 92:7.13 Modern man is adequately self-conscious of religion, but his worshipful customs are confused and discredited by his accelerated social metamorphosis and unprecedented scientific developments. Thinking men and women want religion redefined, and this demand will compel religion to re-evaluate itself. (1013.9) 92:7.14 Modern man is confronted with the task of making more readjustments of human values in one generation than have been made in two thousand years. And this all influences the social attitude toward religion, for religion is a way of living as well as a technique of thinking. (1013.10) 92:7.15 True religion must ever be, at one and the same time, the eternal foundation and the guiding star of all enduring civilizations. (1013.11) 92:7.16 [Presented by a Melchizedek of Nebadon.]

Sukadev liest aus dem Buch Sadhana von Swami Sivananda. Höre über „Das Bewusstsein Brahmans". Mehr findest du in unserem Yoga Wiki unter: http://wiki.yoga-vidya.de/Brahman http://wiki.yoga-vidya.de/Bewusstsein http://wiki.yoga-vidya.de/Sivananda

Geliebter Arjuna, wisse ich bin Brahman - BG.XV 27. Ich bin die Wohnstätte Brahmans. Lesung und Kommentar von Sukadev Bretz, Gründer und Leiter von Yoga Vidya

--{ The Elites' Ruse -- Control by Money You Use: "Wakening is Painful, Minds are Flipped As We Discover We're Living a Pre-Planned Script, Study Foundation Agenda, Not Political Clown, To See How the Futurist Plans the Take-Down, Governments and Banks Own All Means of Production, Rationing Will Come to Reduce All Consumption, Foundation-Funded Movements Preach Self-Sacrifice, So Elite Can Live On, While Useful Idiot Dies, 'Cause Followers are Used in the 'Side' Dialectic, Then They're Disposed of When Victory Expected, That's Why Money Barons Survive Throughout Ages, We Bring on Their Goal, Following Leaders and Sages, Ancient Trick, Exchanging Goods for Money, Slaves of Taxation, Making Elites' Future Sunny" © Alan Watt }-- Psychopaths Get to Top in This System - Psychopathic Personality Disorder - Groups Used, Make Sacrifices for Agenda - Post-Capitalist Service Economy - Mass Immigration, Dog-Eat-Dog Culture - National Health Services based on "Sustainability" (Continual Cutbacks), British Model - Managed Socialist Society - Prince Charles' Model Slum of Mumbai (for Peasants), Skyscrapers for Brahmans. Population Control "Over There" and At Home - Well-Funded NGOs Worldwide - Pesticide Emasculates Male Frogs - Chemical Warfare, Endocrine Disruptors and Known Effects. Scam of Global Warming/Climate Change - Temperature Stations put in Warmer Areas for False Readings. Bilderberger Selections of Politicians - Living Through a Script - Radical Foundations/NGOs Created and Approved by Elite - Communism in the West including America - Nazi Work (to Death) Camps - Political Group Infiltration and Changed Direction. Cyberattacks - New American Century's Plan for Middle East Wars - Media Scares and Terror. (See http://www.cuttingthroughthematrix.com for article links.) *Title/Poem and Dialogue Copyrighted Alan Watt - March 3, 2010 (Exempting Music, Literary Quotes, and Callers' Comments)